<atom:link href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/index.rss" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml" />
<item>
- <title>Støtte for forskjellige kamera-ikoner på overvåkningskamerakartet</title>
- <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/St__tte_for_forskjellige_kamera_ikoner_p___overv__kningskamerakartet.html</link>
- <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/St__tte_for_forskjellige_kamera_ikoner_p___overv__kningskamerakartet.html</guid>
- <pubDate>Sun, 2 Jan 2011 11:05:00 +0100</pubDate>
+ <title>Hva utgjør en vellykket offentlig tjeneste?</title>
+ <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Hva_utgj__r_en_vellykket_offentlig_tjeneste_.html</link>
+ <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Hva_utgj__r_en_vellykket_offentlig_tjeneste_.html</guid>
+ <pubDate>Wed, 4 May 2011 09:10:00 +0200</pubDate>
<description>
-<p>I dag har jeg justert litt på kartet over overvåkningskamera, og
-laget støtte for å gi fotobokser (automatisk trafikk-kontroll) og
-andre overvåkningskamera forskjellige symboler på kartet, slik at det
-er enklere å se forskjell på kamera som vegvesenet kontrollerer og
-andre kamera. Resultatet er lagt ut på
-<a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/surveillance-norway/">kartet
-over overvåkningskamera i Norge</a>. Det er nå 93 fotobokser av 380
-totalt
-<a href="http://www.vegvesen.no/Fag/Fokusomrader/Trafikksikkerhet/Automatisk+trafikkontroll+ATK">i
-følge vegvesenet</a> og 80 andre kamera på kartet, totalt 173 kamera.
-Takk til de 26 stykkene som har bidratt til kamerainformasjonen så
-langt.</p>
+<p>Artikkelen i Aftenposten i dag om de som fikk
+<a href="http://www.aftenposten.no/nyheter/oslo/article4110329.ece">tauet
+bort bilen</a> etter å ha trodd på Oslo kommunes oversikt over når
+ulike gater skulle feies i påsken, fikk meg til å ta en titt på
+<a href="http://www.samferdselsetaten.oslo.kommune.no/miljo/renhold/varrengjoring">kommunens
+oversikt</a>, og der ble jeg fascinert over følgende lille gullkorn:</p>
+
+<p><blockquote>
+<p><strong>Hvorfor har dere ikke SMS-varsling?</strong>
+<br>Forsøksordningen i 2005 viste dessverre at SMS-varsling i liten
+grad reduserte antallet borttauede biler. De som abonnerte på
+ordningen unngikk naturligvis feilparkeringer, men plassene ble brukt
+av "fremmede" biler altså av bileiere som ikke abonnerte og dermed
+ikke ble varslet.</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<p>Det gir inntrykk av at kommunen i stedet for å se på SMS-varsling
+som en tjeneste for innbyggerne, som kunne gjøre at de innbyggerne som
+benyttet seg av tjenesten slapp å få tauet bilen sin, så på det som en
+tjeneste for seg selv for å redusere antall tauinger. Forklaringen
+synes jeg illustrerer veldig godt hvorfor det er så viktig å se på hva
+som er fokus for tjenester som leveres og hva som er
+suksesskriteriene. Jeg mistenker at hvis suksesskriteriet for
+SMS-tjenesten hadde vært hvor fornøyd brukerne av SMS-tjenesten var,
+så ville den blitt videreført. Eller hvis suksesskriteriet var økt
+bruk av tjenesten. Jeg vet i hvert fall mange som gjerne vil slippe å
+både daglig besøke bilen sin der den er parkert i Oslo, og som gjerne
+vil varsles i stedet for å oppdage at bilen er tauet bort når de
+trenger den.</p>
+
+<p>Mon tro hvor mange som må bruke en slik tjeneste før andelen
+bort-tauinger blir redusert? Jeg mistenker den må være godt over 50%
+av alle med bil i Oslo, før det er større sannsynlighet for at en
+ledig men risikofylt parkeringsplass blir stående ledig enn at den blir
+tatt umiddelbart. Det er for stort press på parkeringsplasser i Oslo
+i dag til å tro at en ledig parkeringsplass blir stående ubrukt med
+mindre sjåføren vet at det er risikabelt å stå der. Hvis reduksjon i
+antall bort-tauinger var suksesskriteriet for SMS-tjenesten var en
+dermed garantert å konkludere med at den feilet, da det er umulig å få
+så stor bruksprosent i en prøvedrift.</p>
+
+<p>Fokus for <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</a> er
+innbyggeren, og et av suksesskriteriene er at innbyggerne som bruker
+tjenesten er fornøyde med at rapportene blir synliggjort og levert til
+relevant offentlig myndighet. Det er naturligvis fint om de som
+mottar meldingene også har nytte av tjenesten, og at problemene blir
+fikset, men det viktigste er innbyggernes opplevelse. Innbyggerne
+skal oppleve tjenesten som enkel og effektiv, slik at vi sikrer at
+flest mulig klarer å bidra til å forbedre offentlig infrastruktur.</p>
</description>
</item>
<item>
- <title>What standards are Free and Open as defined by Digistan?</title>
- <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_standards_are_Free_and_Open_as_defined_by_Digistan_.html</link>
- <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_standards_are_Free_and_Open_as_defined_by_Digistan_.html</guid>
- <pubDate>Thu, 30 Dec 2010 23:15:00 +0100</pubDate>
+ <title>Experimental Open311 API for the mySociety fixmystreet system</title>
+ <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Experimental_Open311_API_for_the_mySociety_fixmystreet_system.html</link>
+ <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Experimental_Open311_API_for_the_mySociety_fixmystreet_system.html</guid>
+ <pubDate>Sat, 30 Apr 2011 17:20:00 +0200</pubDate>
<description>
-<p>After trying to
-<a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Is_Ogg_Theora_a_free_and_open_standard_.html">compare
-Ogg Theora</a> to
-<a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">the Digistan
-definition</a> of a free and open standard, I concluded that this need
-to be done for more standards and started on a framework for doing
-this. As a start, I want to get the status for all the standards in
-the Norwegian reference directory, which include UTF-8, HTML, PDF, ODF,
-JPEG, PNG, SVG and others. But to be able to complete this in a
-reasonable time frame, I will need help.</p>
-
-<p>If you want to help out with this work, please visit
-<a href="http://wiki.nuug.no/grupper/standard/digistan-analyse">the
-wiki pages I have set up for this</a>, and let me know that you want
-to help out. The IRC channel #nuug on irc.freenode.net is a good
-place to coordinate this for now, as it is the IRC channel for the
-NUUG association where I have created the framework (I am the leader
-of the Norwegian Unix User Group).</p>
-
-<p>The framework is still forming, and a lot is left to do. Do not be
-scared by the sketchy form of the current pages. :)</p>
+<p>Today, the first draft implementation of an
+<a href="http://www.open311.org/">Open311 API</a> for the Norwegian
+service <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</a> started to
+work. It is only available on the developer server for now, and I
+have not tested it using any existing Open311 client (I lack the
+platforms needed to run the clients I have found so far), but it is
+able to query the database and extract a list of open and closed
+requests within a given category and reported to a given municipality.
+I believe that is a good start to create a useful service for those
+that want to do data mining on the requests submitted so far.</p>
+
+<p>Where is it? Visit
+<a href="http://fiksgatami-dev.nuug.no/open311.cgi/v2/">http://fiksgatami-dev.nuug.no/open311.cgi/v2/</a>
+to have a look. Please send feedback to the
+<a href="http://lists.nuug.no/mailman/listinfo/fiksgatami">fiksgatami
+(at) nuug.no</a> mailing list.</p>
</description>
</item>
<item>
- <title>The many definitions of a open standard</title>
- <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_many_definitions_of_a_open_standard.html</link>
- <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_many_definitions_of_a_open_standard.html</guid>
- <pubDate>Mon, 27 Dec 2010 14:45:00 +0100</pubDate>
+ <title>Initial notes on adding Open311 server API on FixMyStreet</title>
+ <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Initial_notes_on_adding_Open311_server_API_on_FixMyStreet.html</link>
+ <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Initial_notes_on_adding_Open311_server_API_on_FixMyStreet.html</guid>
+ <pubDate>Fri, 29 Apr 2011 10:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
<description>
-<p>One of the reasons I like the Digistan definition of
-"<a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">Free and
-Open Standard</a>" is that this is a new term, and thus the meaning of
-the term has been decided by Digistan. The term "Open Standard" has
-become so misunderstood that it is no longer very useful when talking
-about standards. One end up discussing which definition is the best
-one and with such frame the only one gaining are the proponents of
-de-facto standards and proprietary solutions.</p>
-
-<p>But to give us an idea about the diversity of definitions of open
-standards, here are a few that I know about. This list is not
-complete, but can be a starting point for those that want to do a
-complete survey. More definitions are available on the
-<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_standard">wikipedia
-page</a>.</p>
-
-<p>First off is my favourite, the definition from the European
-Interoperability Framework version 1.0. Really sad to notice that BSA
-and others has succeeded in getting it removed from version 2.0 of the
-framework by stacking the committee drafting the new version with
-their own people. Anyway, the definition is still available and it
-include the key properties needed to make sure everyone can use a
-specification on equal terms.</p>
-
-<blockquote>
-
-<p>The following are the minimal characteristics that a specification
-and its attendant documents must have in order to be considered an
-open standard:</p>
-
-<ul>
-
-<li>The standard is adopted and will be maintained by a not-for-profit
-organisation, and its ongoing development occurs on the basis of an
-open decision-making procedure available to all interested parties
-(consensus or majority decision etc.).</li>
-
-<li>The standard has been published and the standard specification
-document is available either freely or at a nominal charge. It must be
-permissible to all to copy, distribute and use it for no fee or at a
-nominal fee.</li>
-
-<li>The intellectual property - i.e. patents possibly present - of
-(parts of) the standard is made irrevocably available on a royalty-
-free basis.</li>
-
-<li>There are no constraints on the re-use of the standard.</li>
-
-</ul>
-</blockquote>
-
-<p>Another one originates from my friends over at
-<a href="http://www.dkuug.dk/">DKUUG</a>, who coined and gathered
-support for <a href="http://www.aaben-standard.dk/">this
-definition</a> in 2004. It even made it into the Danish parlament as
-<a href="http://www.ft.dk/dokumenter/tingdok.aspx?/samling/20051/beslutningsforslag/B103/som_fremsat.htm">their
-definition of a open standard</a>. Another from a different part of
-the Danish government is available from the wikipedia page.</p>
-
-<blockquote>
-
-<p>En åben standard opfylder følgende krav:</p>
-
-<ol>
-
-<li>Veldokumenteret med den fuldstændige specifikation offentligt
-tilgængelig.</li>
-
-<li>Frit implementerbar uden økonomiske, politiske eller juridiske
-begrænsninger på implementation og anvendelse.</li>
-
-<li>Standardiseret og vedligeholdt i et åbent forum (en såkaldt
-"standardiseringsorganisation") via en åben proces.</li>
-
-</ol>
-
-</blockquote>
-
-<p>Then there is <a href="http://www.fsfe.org/projects/os/def.html">the
-definition</a> from Free Software Foundation Europe.</p>
-
-<blockquote>
-
-<p>An Open Standard refers to a format or protocol that is</p>
-
-<ol>
-
-<li>subject to full public assessment and use without constraints in a
-manner equally available to all parties;</li>
-
-<li>without any components or extensions that have dependencies on
-formats or protocols that do not meet the definition of an Open
-Standard themselves;</li>
-
-<li>free from legal or technical clauses that limit its utilisation by
-any party or in any business model;</li>
-
-<li>managed and further developed independently of any single vendor
-in a process open to the equal participation of competitors and third
-parties;</li>
-
-<li>available in multiple complete implementations by competing
-vendors, or as a complete implementation equally available to all
-parties.</li>
-
-</ol>
-
-</blockquote>
-
-<p>A long time ago, SUN Microsystems, now bought by Oracle, created
-its
-<a href="http://blogs.sun.com/dennisding/resource/Open%20Standard%20Definition.pdf">Open
-Standards Checklist</a> with a fairly detailed description.</p>
-
-<blockquote>
-<p>Creation and Management of an Open Standard
-
-<ul>
-
-<li>Its development and management process must be collaborative and
- democratic:
-
- <ul>
-
- <li>Participation must be accessible to all those who wish to
- participate and can meet fair and reasonable criteria
- imposed by the organization under which it is developed
- and managed.</li>
-
- <li>The processes must be documented and, through a known
- method, can be changed through input from all
- participants.</li>
-
- <li>The process must be based on formal and binding commitments for
- the disclosure and licensing of intellectual property rights.</li>
-
- <li>Development and management should strive for consensus,
- and an appeals process must be clearly outlined.</li>
-
- <li>The standard specification must be open to extensive
- public review at least once in its life-cycle, with
- comments duly discussed and acted upon, if required.</li>
-
- </ul>
-
-</li>
-
-</ul>
+<p>The last few days I have spent some time trying to add support for
+the <a href="http://www.open311.org/">Open311 API</a> in the
+<a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">Norwegian FixMyStreet service</a>.
+Earlier I believed Open311 would be a useful API to use to submit
+reports to the municipalities, but when I noticed that the
+<a href="http://fixmystreet.org.nz/">New Zealand version</a> of
+FixMyStreet had implemented Open311 on the server side, it occurred to
+me that this was a nice way to allow the public, press and
+municipalities to do data mining directly in the FixMyStreet service.
+Thus I went to work implementing the Open311 specification for
+FixMyStreet. The implementation is not yet ready, but I am starting
+to get a draft limping along. In the process, I have discovered a few
+issues with the Open311 specification.</p>
+
+<p>One obvious missing feature is the lack of natural language
+handling in the specification. The specification seem to assume all
+reports will be written in English, and do not provide a way for the
+receiving end to specify which languages are understood there. To be
+able to use the same client and submit to several Open311 receivers,
+it would be useful to know which language to use when writing reports.
+I believe the specification should be extended to allow the receivers
+of problem reports to specify which language they accept, and the
+submitter to specify which language the report is written in.
+Language of a text can also be automatically guessed using statistical
+methods, but for multi-lingual persons like myself, it is useful to
+know which language to use when writing a problem report. I suspect
+some lang=nb,nn kind of attribute would solve it.</p>
+
+<p>A key part of the Open311 API is the list of services provided,
+which is similar to the categories used by FixMyStreet. One issue I
+run into is the need to specify both name and unique identifier for
+each category. The specification do not state that the identifier
+should be numeric, but all example implementations have used numbers
+here. In FixMyStreet, there is no number associated with each
+category. As the specification do not forbid it, I will use the name
+as the unique identifier for now and see how open311 clients handle
+it.</p>
+
+<p>The report format in open311 and the report format in FixMyStreet
+differ in a key part. FixMyStreet have a title and a description,
+while Open311 only have a description and lack the title. I'm not
+quite sure how to best handle this yet. When asking for a FixMyStreet
+report in Open311 format, I just merge title an description into the
+open311 description, but this is not going to work if the open311 API
+should be used for submitting new reports to FixMyStreet.</p>
+
+<p>The search feature in Open311 is missing a way to ask for problems
+near a geographic location. I believe this is important if one is to
+use Open311 as the query language for mobile units. The specification
+should be extended to handle this, probably using some new lat=, lon=
+and range= options.</p>
+
+<p>The final challenge I see is that the FixMyStreet code handle
+several administrations in one interface, while the Open311 API seem
+to assume only one administration. For FixMyStreet, this mean a
+report can be sent to several administrations, and the categories
+available depend on the location of the problem. Not quite sure how
+to best handle this. I've noticed
+<a href="http://seeclickfix.com/open311/">SeeClickFix</a> added
+latitude and longitude options to the services request, but it do not
+solve the problem of what to return when no location is specified.
+Will have to investigate this a bit more.</p>
+
+<p>My distaste for web forums have kept me from bringing these issues
+up with the open311 developer group. I really wish they had a email
+list available via <a href="http://www.gmane.org/">Gmane</a> to use for
+discussions instead of only
+<a href="http://lists.open311.org/groups/discuss">a forum<a/>. Oh,
+well. That will probably resolve itself, one way or another. I've
+also tried visiting the IRC channel #open311 on FreeNode, but no-one
+seem to reply to my questions there. This make me wonder if I just
+fail to understand how the open311 community work. It sure do not
+work like the free software project communities I am used to.</p>
+</description>
+ </item>
+
+ <item>
+ <title>FiksGataMi - fylkesoversikt på kart</title>
+ <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/FiksGataMi___fylkesoversikt_p___kart.html</link>
+ <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/FiksGataMi___fylkesoversikt_p___kart.html</guid>
+ <pubDate>Fri, 15 Apr 2011 13:15:00 +0200</pubDate>
+ <description>
+<p>Det er morsomt å følge med hvordan bruken av FiksGataMi sprer seg
+over det ganske land. Her er lenkene til fylkesoversikt på kart over
+de (for tiden) 200 siste problemene. Bruker her GeoRSS-kilden i
+FiksGataMi og presenterer enten via Google Maps eller en
+GeoRSS-fremviser jeg fant for OpenStreetmap.</p>
-<p>Use and Licensing of an Open Standard</p>
<ul>
-<li>The standard must describe an interface, not an implementation,
- and the industry must be capable of creating multiple, competing
- implementations to the interface described in the standard without
- undue or restrictive constraints. Interfaces include APIs,
- protocols, schemas, data formats and their encoding.</li>
-
-<li> The standard must not contain any proprietary "hooks" that create
- a technical or economic barriers</li>
-
-<li>Faithful implementations of the standard must
- interoperate. Interoperability means the ability of a computer
- program to communicate and exchange information with other computer
- programs and mutually to use the information which has been
- exchanged. This includes the ability to use, convert, or exchange
- file formats, protocols, schemas, interface information or
- conventions, so as to permit the computer program to work with other
- computer programs and users in all the ways in which they are
- intended to function.</li>
-
-<li>It must be permissible for anyone to copy, distribute and read the
- standard for a nominal fee, or even no fee. If there is a fee, it
- must be low enough to not preclude widespread use.</li>
-
-<li>It must be possible for anyone to obtain free (no royalties or
- fees; also known as "royalty free"), worldwide, non-exclusive and
- perpetual licenses to all essential patent claims to make, use and
- sell products based on the standard. The only exceptions are
- terminations per the reciprocity and defensive suspension terms
- outlined below. Essential patent claims include pending, unpublished
- patents, published patents, and patent applications. The license is
- only for the exact scope of the standard in question.
-
- <ul>
-
- <li> May be conditioned only on reciprocal licenses to any of
- licensees' patent claims essential to practice that standard
- (also known as a reciprocity clause)</li>
-
- <li> May be terminated as to any licensee who sues the licensor
- or any other licensee for infringement of patent claims
- essential to practice that standard (also known as a
- "defensive suspension" clause)</li>
-
- <li> The same licensing terms are available to every potential
- licensor</li>
-
- </ul>
-</li>
-
-<li>The licensing terms of an open standards must not preclude
- implementations of that standard under open source licensing terms
- or restricted licensing terms</li>
+ <li>Østfold [ <a href="http://maps.google.com/maps?q=http://www.fiksgatami.no/rss/reports/Østfold">Google Maps</a> ] | [ <a href="http://vgr.petschge.de/?url=http://www.fiksgatami.no/rss/reports/Østfold">OpenStreetmap</a> ]</li>
+ <li>Akershus [ <a href="http://maps.google.com/maps?q=http://www.fiksgatami.no/rss/reports/Akershus">Google Maps</a> ] | [ <a href="http://vgr.petschge.de/?url=http://www.fiksgatami.no/rss/reports/Akershus">OpenStreetmap</a> ]</li>
+ <li>Oslo [ <a href="http://maps.google.com/maps?q=http://www.fiksgatami.no/rss/reports/Oslo">Google Maps</a> ] | [ <a href="http://vgr.petschge.de/?url=http://www.fiksgatami.no/rss/reports/Oslo">OpenStreetmap</a> ]</li>
+ <li>Hedmark [ <a href="http://maps.google.com/maps?q=http://www.fiksgatami.no/rss/reports/Hedmark">Google Maps</a> ] | [ <a href="http://vgr.petschge.de/?url=http://www.fiksgatami.no/rss/reports/Hedmark">OpenStreetmap</a> ]</li>
+ <li>Oppland [ <a href="http://maps.google.com/maps?q=http://www.fiksgatami.no/rss/reports/Oppland">Google Maps</a> ] | [ <a href="http://vgr.petschge.de/?url=http://www.fiksgatami.no/rss/reports/Oppland">OpenStreetmap</a> ]</li>
+ <li>Buskerud [ <a href="http://maps.google.com/maps?q=http://www.fiksgatami.no/rss/reports/Buskerud">Google Maps</a> ] | [ <a href="http://vgr.petschge.de/?url=http://www.fiksgatami.no/rss/reports/Buskerud">OpenStreetmap</a> ]</li>
+ <li>Vestfold [ <a href="http://maps.google.com/maps?q=http://www.fiksgatami.no/rss/reports/Vestfold">Google Maps</a> ] | [ <a href="http://vgr.petschge.de/?url=http://www.fiksgatami.no/rss/reports/Vestfold">OpenStreetmap</a> ]</li>
+ <li>Telemark [ <a href="http://maps.google.com/maps?q=http://www.fiksgatami.no/rss/reports/Telemark">Google Maps</a> ] | [ <a href="http://vgr.petschge.de/?url=http://www.fiksgatami.no/rss/reports/Telemark">OpenStreetmap</a> ]</li>
+ <li>Aust-Agder [ <a href="http://maps.google.com/maps?q=http://www.fiksgatami.no/rss/reports/Aust-Agder">Google Maps</a> ] | [ <a href="http://vgr.petschge.de/?url=http://www.fiksgatami.no/rss/reports/Aust-Agder">OpenStreetmap</a> ]</li>
+ <li>Vest-Agder [ <a href="http://maps.google.com/maps?q=http://www.fiksgatami.no/rss/reports/Vest-Agder">Google Maps</a> ] | [ <a href="http://vgr.petschge.de/?url=http://www.fiksgatami.no/rss/reports/Vest-Agder">OpenStreetmap</a> ]</li>
+ <li>Rogaland [ <a href="http://maps.google.com/maps?q=http://www.fiksgatami.no/rss/reports/Rogaland">Google Maps</a> ] | [ <a href="http://vgr.petschge.de/?url=http://www.fiksgatami.no/rss/reports/Rogaland">OpenStreetmap</a> ]</li>
+ <li>Hordaland [ <a href="http://maps.google.com/maps?q=http://www.fiksgatami.no/rss/reports/Hordaland">Google Maps</a> ] | [ <a href="http://vgr.petschge.de/?url=http://www.fiksgatami.no/rss/reports/Hordaland">OpenStreetmap</a> ]</li>
+ <li>Sogn og Fjordane [ <a href="http://maps.google.com/maps?q=http://www.fiksgatami.no/rss/reports/Sogn%2Bog%2BFjordane">Google Maps</a> ] | [ <a href="http://vgr.petschge.de/?url=http://www.fiksgatami.no/rss/reports/Sogn%2Bog%2BFjordane">OpenStreetmap</a> ]</li>
+ <li>Møre og Romsdal [ <a href="http://maps.google.com/maps?q=http://www.fiksgatami.no/rss/reports/Møre%2Bog%2BRomsdal">Google Maps</a> ] | [ <a href="http://vgr.petschge.de/?url=http://www.fiksgatami.no/rss/reports/Møre%2Bog%2BRomsdal">OpenStreetmap</a> ]</li>
+ <li>Sør-Trøndelag [ <a href="http://maps.google.com/maps?q=http://www.fiksgatami.no/rss/reports/Sør-Trøndelag">Google Maps</a> ] | [ <a href="http://vgr.petschge.de/?url=http://www.fiksgatami.no/rss/reports/Sør-Trøndelag">OpenStreetmap</a> ]</li>
+ <li>Nord-Trøndelag [ <a href="http://maps.google.com/maps?q=http://www.fiksgatami.no/rss/reports/Nord-Trøndelag">Google Maps</a> ] | [ <a href="http://vgr.petschge.de/?url=http://www.fiksgatami.no/rss/reports/Nord-Trøndelag">OpenStreetmap</a> ]</li>
+ <li>Nordland [ <a href="http://maps.google.com/maps?q=http://www.fiksgatami.no/rss/reports/Nordland">Google Maps</a> ] | [ <a href="http://vgr.petschge.de/?url=http://www.fiksgatami.no/rss/reports/Nordland">OpenStreetmap</a> ]</li>
+ <li>Troms [ <a href="http://maps.google.com/maps?q=http://www.fiksgatami.no/rss/reports/Troms">Google Maps</a> ] | [ <a href="http://vgr.petschge.de/?url=http://www.fiksgatami.no/rss/reports/Troms">OpenStreetmap</a> ]</li>
+ <li>Finnmark [ <a href="http://maps.google.com/maps?q=http://www.fiksgatami.no/rss/reports/Finnmark">Google Maps</a> ] | [ <a href="http://vgr.petschge.de/?url=http://www.fiksgatami.no/rss/reports/Finnmark">OpenStreetmap</a> ]</li>
</ul>
-</blockquote>
+<p>Antall problemer returnert i GeoRSS-kildene justeres over tid etter
+hvert som vi får mer erfaring med hvilken belastning det gir på
+tjenesten.</p>
-<p>It is said that one of the nice things about standards is that
-there are so many of them. As you can see, the same holds true for
-open standard definitions. Most of the definitions have a lot in
-common, and it is not really controversial what properties a open
-standard should have, but the diversity of definitions have made it
-possible for those that want to avoid a level marked field and real
-competition to downplay the significance of open standards. I hope we
-can turn this tide by focusing on the advantages of Free and Open
-Standards.</p>
+<p>Oppdatering 2011-04-27: Endret URL til fylker med mellomrom i
+navnene fra %20 til %2B, slik at de fungerer i flere nettlesere.</p>
</description>
</item>
<item>
- <title>Is Ogg Theora a free and open standard?</title>
- <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Is_Ogg_Theora_a_free_and_open_standard_.html</link>
- <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Is_Ogg_Theora_a_free_and_open_standard_.html</guid>
- <pubDate>Sat, 25 Dec 2010 20:25:00 +0100</pubDate>
+ <title>Skolelinux-intervju: Marius Kotsbak</title>
+ <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Skolelinux_intervju__Marius_Kotsbak.html</link>
+ <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Skolelinux_intervju__Marius_Kotsbak.html</guid>
+ <pubDate>Sun, 10 Apr 2011 11:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
<description>
-<p><a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">The
-Digistan definition</a> of a free and open standard reads like this:</p>
-
-<blockquote>
-
-<p>The Digital Standards Organization defines free and open standard
-as follows:</p>
-
-<ol>
-
-<li>A free and open standard is immune to vendor capture at all stages
-in its life-cycle. Immunity from vendor capture makes it possible to
-freely use, improve upon, trust, and extend a standard over time.</li>
-
-<li>The standard is adopted and will be maintained by a not-for-profit
-organisation, and its ongoing development occurs on the basis of an
-open decision-making procedure available to all interested
-parties.</li>
-
-<li>The standard has been published and the standard specification
-document is available freely. It must be permissible to all to copy,
-distribute, and use it freely.</li>
-
-<li>The patents possibly present on (parts of) the standard are made
-irrevocably available on a royalty-free basis.</li>
-
-<li>There are no constraints on the re-use of the standard.</li>
-
-</ol>
-
-<p>The economic outcome of a free and open standard, which can be
-measured, is that it enables perfect competition between suppliers of
-products based on the standard.</p>
-</blockquote>
-
-<p>For a while now I have tried to figure out of Ogg Theora is a free
-and open standard according to this definition. Here is a short
-writeup of what I have been able to gather so far. I brought up the
-topic on the Xiph advocacy mailing list
-<a href="http://lists.xiph.org/pipermail/advocacy/2009-July/001632.html">in
-July 2009</a>, for those that want to see some background information.
-According to Ivo Emanuel Gonçalves and Monty Montgomery on that list
-the Ogg Theora specification fulfils the Digistan definition.</p>
-
-<p><strong>Free from vendor capture?</strong></p>
-
-<p>As far as I can see, there is no single vendor that can control the
-Ogg Theora specification. It can be argued that the
-<a href="http://www.xiph.org/">Xiph foundation</A> is such vendor, but
-given that it is a non-profit foundation with the expressed goal
-making free and open protocols and standards available, it is not
-obvious that this is a real risk. One issue with the Xiph
-foundation is that its inner working (as in board member list, or who
-control the foundation) are not easily available on the web. I've
-been unable to find out who is in the foundation board, and have not
-seen any accounting information documenting how money is handled nor
-where is is spent in the foundation. It is thus not obvious for an
-external observer who control The Xiph foundation, and for all I know
-it is possible for a single vendor to take control over the
-specification. But it seem unlikely.</p>
-
-<p><strong>Maintained by open not-for-profit organisation?</strong></p>
-
-<p>Assuming that the Xiph foundation is the organisation its web pages
-claim it to be, this point is fulfilled. If Xiph foundation is
-controlled by a single vendor, it isn't, but I have not found any
-documentation indicating this.</p>
-
-<p>According to
-<a href="http://media.hiof.no/diverse/fad/rapport_4.pdf">a report</a>
-prepared by Audun Vaaler og Børre Ludvigsen for the Norwegian
-government, the Xiph foundation is a non-commercial organisation and
-the development process is open, transparent and non-Discrimatory.
-Until proven otherwise, I believe it make most sense to believe the
-report is correct.</p>
-
-<p><strong>Specification freely available?</strong></p>
-
-<p>The specification for the <a href="http://www.xiph.org/ogg/doc/">Ogg
-container format</a> and both the
-<a href="http://www.xiph.org/vorbis/doc/">Vorbis</a> and
-<a href="http://theora.org/doc/">Theora</a> codeces are available on
-the web. This are the terms in the Vorbis and Theora specification:
-
-<blockquote>
-
-Anyone may freely use and distribute the Ogg and [Vorbis/Theora]
-specifications, whether in private, public, or corporate
-capacity. However, the Xiph.Org Foundation and the Ogg project reserve
-the right to set the Ogg [Vorbis/Theora] specification and certify
-specification compliance.
-
-</blockquote>
-
-<p>The Ogg container format is specified in IETF
-<a href="http://www.xiph.org/ogg/doc/rfc3533.txt">RFC 3533</a>, and
-this is the term:<p>
-
-<blockquote>
-
-<p>This document and translations of it may be copied and furnished to
-others, and derivative works that comment on or otherwise explain it
-or assist in its implementation may be prepared, copied, published and
-distributed, in whole or in part, without restriction of any kind,
-provided that the above copyright notice and this paragraph are
-included on all such copies and derivative works. However, this
-document itself may not be modified in any way, such as by removing
-the copyright notice or references to the Internet Society or other
-Internet organizations, except as needed for the purpose of developing
-Internet standards in which case the procedures for copyrights defined
-in the Internet Standards process must be followed, or as required to
-translate it into languages other than English.</p>
-
-<p>The limited permissions granted above are perpetual and will not be
-revoked by the Internet Society or its successors or assigns.</p>
-</blockquote>
-
-<p>All these terms seem to allow unlimited distribution and use, an
-this term seem to be fulfilled. There might be a problem with the
-missing permission to distribute modified versions of the text, and
-thus reuse it in other specifications. Not quite sure if that is a
-requirement for the Digistan definition.</p>
-
-<p><strong>Royalty-free?</strong></p>
-
-<p>There are no known patent claims requiring royalties for the Ogg
-Theora format.
-<a href="http://www.streamingmedia.com/Articles/ReadArticle.aspx?ArticleID=65782">MPEG-LA</a>
-and
-<a href="http://yro.slashdot.org/story/10/04/30/237238/Steve-Jobs-Hints-At-Theora-Lawsuit">Steve
-Jobs</a> in Apple claim to know about some patent claims (submarine
-patents) against the Theora format, but no-one else seem to believe
-them. Both Opera Software and the Mozilla Foundation have looked into
-this and decided to implement Ogg Theora support in their browsers
-without paying any royalties. For now the claims from MPEG-LA and
-Steve Jobs seem more like FUD to scare people to use the H.264 codec
-than any real problem with Ogg Theora.</p>
-
-<p><strong>No constraints on re-use?</strong></p>
-
-<p>I am not aware of any constraints on re-use.</p>
-
-<p><strong>Conclusion</strong></p>
-
-<p>3 of 5 requirements seem obviously fulfilled, and the remaining 2
-depend on the governing structure of the Xiph foundation. Given the
-background report used by the Norwegian government, I believe it is
-safe to assume the last two requirements are fulfilled too, but it
-would be nice if the Xiph foundation web site made it easier to verify
-this.</p>
-
-<p>It would be nice to see other analysis of other specifications to
-see if they are free and open standards.</p>
+<p>Neste mann ut er Marius Kotsbak, styremedlem i
+<a href="http://www.friprogramvareiskolen.no/">FRISK</a> og mangeårig
+bidragsyter i
+<a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a>-prosjektet.</p>
+
+<p><strong>Hvem er du, og hva driver du med til daglig?</strong></p>
+
+<p>Jeg er en systemutvikler/kybernetiker og jobber med dette til
+daglig. På fritiden tester jeg ut/bruker mye fri programvare, og
+bidrar med testing og utvikling når jeg ser stort nok behov for det og
+jeg har noe å bidra med.</p>
+
+<p><strong>Hvordan kom du i kontakt med Skolelinux-prosjektet?</strong></p>
+
+<p>Hmm, det er lenge siden, så det er nesten så jeg ikke husker. Jeg
+hadde vel hørt om prosjektet i media før en gjeng i Trondheim startet
+opp SPIST, Skolelinux-prosjektet i Sør-Trøndelag, hvor vi hjalp noen
+skoler i nærområdet med å installere Skolelinux og finne brukt
+IT-utstyr til disse. Det var moro å gjøre noe praktisk for å spre
+Skolelinux, og å se hvor fort gjort det var å sette opp utrangerte
+klientmaskiner og få disse opp som tynnklienter på helt nye datasaler
+på skolene, kun med kostnaden til servere.</p>
+
+<p><strong>Hva er fordelene med Skolelinux slik du ser det?</strong></p>
+
+<p>Det er et system spesielt skreddersydd for drift av et stort antall
+klienter mot servere, og da spesielt i henhold til skolers behov. Det
+er enkelt og billig å installere og drifte, og det trenger ikke ny
+maskinvare for god ytelse.</p>
+
+<p><strong>Hva er ulempene med Skolelinux slik du ser det?</strong></p>
+
+<p>Hardwarestøtten kunne vært bedre og i enda større grad
+installerbart rett ut av boksen. Distribusjonen har til tider hatt
+litt gammel programvare pga. at den følger Debian sine utgivelser.
+Kanskje man skulle vurdert en versjon basert på Ubuntu eller andre
+distribusjoner i tillegg?</p>
+
+<p><strong>Hvilken fri programvare bruker du til daglig?</strong></p>
+
+<p>Oi, det er ikke lite. Her er det jeg kommer på i farta. Jeg bruker
+Linux og Ubuntu, og på Ubuntu programene Firefox, Thunderbird,
+Chromium, Pidgin, Digikam, OpenOffice, Wireshark, git og irssi.
+Telefonen min er en Android, og der bruker jeg programmene K-9 Mail,
+OI Shopping list, Shuffle, ZXing, OI Notepad og ADW Desktop. På jobb
+bruker jeg JBoss, Eclipse, uCLinux for Blackfin, RCF-CPP, Qt, Maven,
+og boost-bibliotekene for C++.</p>
+
+<p><strong>Hvilken strategi tror du er den rette å bruke for å få
+skoler til å ta i bruk fri programvare?</strong></p>
+
+<p>En bør fokusere på totalkostnader inkludert driftsbehov,
+fleksibilitet, åpenhet og ikke låsing til en leverandør framfor sparte
+lisenskostnader, samt programvarens kvalitet og fortrinn, og at den
+fritt kan brukes på et ubegrenset antall PC-er, også hjemme hos
+elevene. En bør også forbedre den fri programvaren ved testing,
+bugrapportering og kodebidrag om man kan, og ikke anbefale programvare
+uten at man har forsikret seg at den har tilstrekkelig kvalitet,
+ellers kan man lett oppnå det motsatte. Tror en bør selge inn
+konseptet til fylkes-/statsnivå, kanskje med bidrag til
+utviklingsarbeid fra disse som alle landets skoler kan få glede
+av.</p>
</description>
</item>
<item>
- <title>The reply from Edgar Villanueva to Microsoft in Peru</title>
- <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_reply_from_Edgar_Villanueva_to_Microsoft_in_Peru.html</link>
- <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_reply_from_Edgar_Villanueva_to_Microsoft_in_Peru.html</guid>
- <pubDate>Sat, 25 Dec 2010 10:50:00 +0100</pubDate>
+ <title>Gnash enteres Google Summer of Code 2011</title>
+ <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gnash_enteres_Google_Summer_of_Code_2011.html</link>
+ <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gnash_enteres_Google_Summer_of_Code_2011.html</guid>
+ <pubDate>Wed, 6 Apr 2011 09:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
<description>
-<p>A few days ago
-<a href="http://www.idg.no/computerworld/article189879.ece">an
-article</a> in the Norwegian Computerworld magazine about how version
-2.0 of
-<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Interoperability_Framework">European
-Interoperability Framework</a> has been successfully lobbied by the
-proprietary software industry to remove the focus on free software.
-Nothing very surprising there, given
-<a href="http://news.slashdot.org/story/10/03/29/2115235/Open-Source-Open-Standards-Under-Attack-In-Europe">earlier
-reports</a> on how Microsoft and others have stacked the committees in
-this work. But I find this very sad. The definition of
-<a href="http://www.nuug.no/dokumenter/standard-presse-def-200506.txt">an
-open standard from version 1</a> was very good, and something I
-believe should be used also in the future, alongside
-<a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">the
-definition from Digistan</A>. Version 2 have removed the open
-standard definition from its content.</p>
-
-<p>Anyway, the news reminded me of the great reply sent by Dr. Edgar
-Villanueva, congressman in Peru at the time, to Microsoft as a reply
-to Microsofts attack on his proposal regarding the use of free software
-in the public sector in Peru. As the text was not available from a
-few of the URLs where it used to be available, I copy it here from
-<a href="http://gnuwin.epfl.ch/articles/en/reponseperou/villanueva_to_ms.html">my
-source</a> to ensure it is available also in the future. Some
-background information about that story is available in
-<a href="http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/6099">an article</a> from
-Linux Journal in 2002.</p>
-
-<blockquote>
-<p>Lima, 8th of April, 2002<br>
-To: Señor JUAN ALBERTO GONZÁLEZ<br>
-General Manager of Microsoft Perú</p>
-
-<p>Dear Sir:</p>
-
-<p>First of all, I thank you for your letter of March 25, 2002 in which you state the official position of Microsoft relative to Bill Number 1609, Free Software in Public Administration, which is indubitably inspired by the desire for Peru to find a suitable place in the global technological context. In the same spirit, and convinced that we will find the best solutions through an exchange of clear and open ideas, I will take this opportunity to reply to the commentaries included in your letter.</p>
-
-<p>While acknowledging that opinions such as yours constitute a significant contribution, it would have been even more worthwhile for me if, rather than formulating objections of a general nature (which we will analyze in detail later) you had gathered solid arguments for the advantages that proprietary software could bring to the Peruvian State, and to its citizens in general, since this would have allowed a more enlightening exchange in respect of each of our positions.</p>
-
-<p>With the aim of creating an orderly debate, we will assume that what you call "open source software" is what the Bill defines as "free software", since there exists software for which the source code is distributed together with the program, but which does not fall within the definition established by the Bill; and that what you call "commercial software" is what the Bill defines as "proprietary" or "unfree", given that there exists free software which is sold in the market for a price like any other good or service.</p>
-
-<p>It is also necessary to make it clear that the aim of the Bill we are discussing is not directly related to the amount of direct savings that can by made by using free software in state institutions. That is in any case a marginal aggregate value, but in no way is it the chief focus of the Bill. The basic principles which inspire the Bill are linked to the basic guarantees of a state of law, such as:</p>
-
-<p>
-<ul>
-<li>Free access to public information by the citizen. </li>
-<li>Permanence of public data. </li>
-<li>Security of the State and citizens.</li>
-</ul>
-</p>
-
-<p>To guarantee the free access of citizens to public information, it is indispensable that the encoding of data is not tied to a single provider. The use of standard and open formats gives a guarantee of this free access, if necessary through the creation of compatible free software.</p>
-
-<p>To guarantee the permanence of public data, it is necessary that the usability and maintenance of the software does not depend on the goodwill of the suppliers, or on the monopoly conditions imposed by them. For this reason the State needs systems the development of which can be guaranteed due to the availability of the source code.</p>
-
-<p>To guarantee national security or the security of the State, it is indispensable to be able to rely on systems without elements which allow control from a distance or the undesired transmission of information to third parties. Systems with source code freely accessible to the public are required to allow their inspection by the State itself, by the citizens, and by a large number of independent experts throughout the world. Our proposal brings further security, since the knowledge of the source code will eliminate the growing number of programs with *spy code*. </p>
-
-<p>In the same way, our proposal strengthens the security of the citizens, both in their role as legitimate owners of information managed by the state, and in their role as consumers. In this second case, by allowing the growth of a widespread availability of free software not containing *spy code* able to put at risk privacy and individual freedoms.</p>
-
-<p>In this sense, the Bill is limited to establishing the conditions under which the state bodies will obtain software in the future, that is, in a way compatible with these basic principles.</p>
-
-
-<p>From reading the Bill it will be clear that once passed:<br>
-<li>the law does not forbid the production of proprietary software</li>
-<li>the law does not forbid the sale of proprietary software</li>
-<li>the law does not specify which concrete software to use</li>
-<li>the law does not dictate the supplier from whom software will be bought</li>
-<li>the law does not limit the terms under which a software product can be licensed.</li>
-
-</p>
-
-<p>What the Bill does express clearly, is that, for software to be acceptable for the state it is not enough that it is technically capable of fulfilling a task, but that further the contractual conditions must satisfy a series of requirements regarding the license, without which the State cannot guarantee the citizen adequate processing of his data, watching over its integrity, confidentiality, and accessibility throughout time, as these are very critical aspects for its normal functioning.</p>
-
-<p>We agree, Mr. Gonzalez, that information and communication technology have a significant impact on the quality of life of the citizens (whether it be positive or negative). We surely also agree that the basic values I have pointed out above are fundamental in a democratic state like Peru. So we are very interested to know of any other way of guaranteeing these principles, other than through the use of free software in the terms defined by the Bill.</p>
-
-<p>As for the observations you have made, we will now go on to analyze them in detail:</p>
-
-<p>Firstly, you point out that: "1. The bill makes it compulsory for all public bodies to use only free software, that is to say open source software, which breaches the principles of equality before the law, that of non-discrimination and the right of free private enterprise, freedom of industry and of contract, protected by the constitution."</p>
-
-<p>This understanding is in error. The Bill in no way affects the rights you list; it limits itself entirely to establishing conditions for the use of software on the part of state institutions, without in any way meddling in private sector transactions. It is a well established principle that the State does not enjoy the wide spectrum of contractual freedom of the private sector, as it is limited in its actions precisely by the requirement for transparency of public acts; and in this sense, the preservation of the greater common interest must prevail when legislating on the matter.</p>
-
-<p>The Bill protects equality under the law, since no natural or legal person is excluded from the right of offering these goods to the State under the conditions defined in the Bill and without more limitations than those established by the Law of State Contracts and Purchasing (T.U.O. by Supreme Decree No. 012-2001-PCM).</p>
-
-<p>The Bill does not introduce any discrimination whatever, since it only establishes *how* the goods have to be provided (which is a state power) and not *who* has to provide them (which would effectively be discriminatory, if restrictions based on national origin, race religion, ideology, sexual preference etc. were imposed). On the contrary, the Bill is decidedly antidiscriminatory. This is so because by defining with no room for doubt the conditions for the provision of software, it prevents state bodies from using software which has a license including discriminatory conditions.</p>
-
-<p>It should be obvious from the preceding two paragraphs that the Bill does not harm free private enterprise, since the latter can always choose under what conditions it will produce software; some of these will be acceptable to the State, and others will not be since they contradict the guarantee of the basic principles listed above. This free initiative is of course compatible with the freedom of industry and freedom of contract (in the limited form in which the State can exercise the latter). Any private subject can produce software under the conditions which the State requires, or can refrain from doing so. Nobody is forced to adopt a model of production, but if they wish to provide software to the State, they must provide the mechanisms which guarantee the basic principles, and which are those described in the Bill.</p>
-
-<p>By way of an example: nothing in the text of the Bill would prevent your company offering the State bodies an office "suite", under the conditions defined in the Bill and setting the price that you consider satisfactory. If you did not, it would not be due to restrictions imposed by the law, but to business decisions relative to the method of commercializing your products, decisions with which the State is not involved.</p>
-
-<p>To continue; you note that:" 2. The bill, by making the use of open source software compulsory, would establish discriminatory and non competitive practices in the contracting and purchasing by public bodies..."</p>
-
-<p>This statement is just a reiteration of the previous one, and so the response can be found above. However, let us concern ourselves for a moment with your comment regarding "non-competitive ... practices."</p>
-
-<p>Of course, in defining any kind of purchase, the buyer sets conditions which relate to the proposed use of the good or service. From the start, this excludes certain manufacturers from the possibility of competing, but does not exclude them "a priori", but rather based on a series of principles determined by the autonomous will of the purchaser, and so the process takes place in conformance with the law. And in the Bill it is established that *no one* is excluded from competing as far as he guarantees the fulfillment of the basic principles.</p>
-
-<p>Furthermore, the Bill *stimulates* competition, since it tends to generate a supply of software with better conditions of usability, and to better existing work, in a model of continuous improvement.</p>
-
-<p>On the other hand, the central aspect of competivity is the chance to provide better choices to the consumer. Now, it is impossible to ignore the fact that marketing does not play a neutral role when the product is offered on the market (since accepting the opposite would lead one to suppose that firms' expenses in marketing lack any sense), and that therefore a significant expense under this heading can influence the decisions of the purchaser. This influence of marketing is in large measure reduced by the bill that we are backing, since the choice within the framework proposed is based on the *technical merits* of the product and not on the effort put into commercialization by the producer; in this sense, competitiveness is increased, since the smallest software producer can compete on equal terms with the most powerful corporations.</p>
-
-<p>It is necessary to stress that there is no position more anti-competitive than that of the big software producers, which frequently abuse their dominant position, since in innumerable cases they propose as a solution to problems raised by users: "update your software to the new version" (at the user's expense, naturally); furthermore, it is common to find arbitrary cessation of technical help for products, which, in the provider's judgment alone, are "old"; and so, to receive any kind of technical assistance, the user finds himself forced to migrate to new versions (with non-trivial costs, especially as changes in hardware platform are often involved). And as the whole infrastructure is based on proprietary data formats, the user stays "trapped" in the need to continue using products from the same supplier, or to make the huge effort to change to another environment (probably also proprietary).</p>
-
-<p>You add: "3. So, by compelling the State to favor a business model based entirely on open source, the bill would only discourage the local and international manufacturing companies, which are the ones which really undertake important expenditures, create a significant number of direct and indirect jobs, as well as contributing to the GNP, as opposed to a model of open source software which tends to have an ever weaker economic impact, since it mainly creates jobs in the service sector."</p>
-
-<p>I do not agree with your statement. Partly because of what you yourself point out in paragraph 6 of your letter, regarding the relative weight of services in the context of software use. This contradiction alone would invalidate your position. The service model, adopted by a large number of companies in the software industry, is much larger in economic terms, and with a tendency to increase, than the licensing of programs.</p>
-
-<p>On the other hand, the private sector of the economy has the widest possible freedom to choose the economic model which best suits its interests, even if this freedom of choice is often obscured subliminally by the disproportionate expenditure on marketing by the producers of proprietary software.</p>
-
-<p>In addition, a reading of your opinion would lead to the conclusion that the State market is crucial and essential for the proprietary software industry, to such a point that the choice made by the State in this bill would completely eliminate the market for these firms. If that is true, we can deduce that the State must be subsidizing the proprietary software industry. In the unlikely event that this were true, the State would have the right to apply the subsidies in the area it considered of greatest social value; it is undeniable, in this improbable hypothesis, that if the State decided to subsidize software, it would have to do so choosing the free over the proprietary, considering its social effect and the rational use of taxpayers money.</p>
-
-<p>In respect of the jobs generated by proprietary software in countries like ours, these mainly concern technical tasks of little aggregate value; at the local level, the technicians who provide support for proprietary software produced by transnational companies do not have the possibility of fixing bugs, not necessarily for lack of technical capability or of talent, but because they do not have access to the source code to fix it. With free software one creates more technically qualified employment and a framework of free competence where success is only tied to the ability to offer good technical support and quality of service, one stimulates the market, and one increases the shared fund of knowledge, opening up alternatives to generate services of greater total value and a higher quality level, to the benefit of all involved: producers, service organizations, and consumers.</p>
-
-<p>It is a common phenomenon in developing countries that local software industries obtain the majority of their takings in the service sector, or in the creation of "ad hoc" software. Therefore, any negative impact that the application of the Bill might have in this sector will be more than compensated by a growth in demand for services (as long as these are carried out to high quality standards). If the transnational software companies decide not to compete under these new rules of the game, it is likely that they will undergo some decrease in takings in terms of payment for licenses; however, considering that these firms continue to allege that much of the software used by the State has been illegally copied, one can see that the impact will not be very serious. Certainly, in any case their fortune will be determined by market laws, changes in which cannot be avoided; many firms traditionally associated with proprietary software have already set out on the road (supported by copious expense) of providing services associated with free software, which shows that the models are not mutually exclusive.</p>
-
-<p>With this bill the State is deciding that it needs to preserve certain fundamental values. And it is deciding this based on its sovereign power, without affecting any of the constitutional guarantees. If these values could be guaranteed without having to choose a particular economic model, the effects of the law would be even more beneficial. In any case, it should be clear that the State does not choose an economic model; if it happens that there only exists one economic model capable of providing software which provides the basic guarantee of these principles, this is because of historical circumstances, not because of an arbitrary choice of a given model.</p>
-
-<p>Your letter continues: "4. The bill imposes the use of open source software without considering the dangers that this can bring from the point of view of security, guarantee, and possible violation of the intellectual property rights of third parties."</p>
-
-<p>Alluding in an abstract way to "the dangers this can bring", without specifically mentioning a single one of these supposed dangers, shows at the least some lack of knowledge of the topic. So, allow me to enlighten you on these points.</p>
-
-<p>On security:</p>
-
-<p>National security has already been mentioned in general terms in the initial discussion of the basic principles of the bill. In more specific terms, relative to the security of the software itself, it is well known that all software (whether proprietary or free) contains errors or "bugs" (in programmers' slang). But it is also well known that the bugs in free software are fewer, and are fixed much more quickly, than in proprietary software. It is not in vain that numerous public bodies responsible for the IT security of state systems in developed countries require the use of free software for the same conditions of security and efficiency.</p>
-
-<p>What is impossible to prove is that proprietary software is more secure than free, without the public and open inspection of the scientific community and users in general. This demonstration is impossible because the model of proprietary software itself prevents this analysis, so that any guarantee of security is based only on promises of good intentions (biased, by any reckoning) made by the producer itself, or its contractors.</p>
-
-<p>It should be remembered that in many cases, the licensing conditions include Non-Disclosure clauses which prevent the user from publicly revealing security flaws found in the licensed proprietary product.</p>
-
-<p>In respect of the guarantee:</p>
-
-A<p>s you know perfectly well, or could find out by reading the "End User License Agreement" of the products you license, in the great majority of cases the guarantees are limited to replacement of the storage medium in case of defects, but in no case is compensation given for direct or indirect damages, loss of profits, etc... If as a result of a security bug in one of your products, not fixed in time by yourselves, an attacker managed to compromise crucial State systems, what guarantees, reparations and compensation would your company make in accordance with your licensing conditions? The guarantees of proprietary software, inasmuch as programs are delivered ``AS IS'', that is, in the state in which they are, with no additional responsibility of the provider in respect of function, in no way differ from those normal with free software.</p>
-
-<p>On Intellectual Property:</p>
-
-<p>Questions of intellectual property fall outside the scope of this bill, since they are covered by specific other laws. The model of free software in no way implies ignorance of these laws, and in fact the great majority of free software is covered by copyright. In reality, the inclusion of this question in your observations shows your confusion in respect of the legal framework in which free software is developed. The inclusion of the intellectual property of others in works claimed as one's own is not a practice that has been noted in the free software community; whereas, unfortunately, it has been in the area of proprietary software. As an example, the condemnation by the Commercial Court of Nanterre, France, on 27th September 2001 of Microsoft Corp. to a penalty of 3 million francs in damages and interest, for violation of intellectual property (piracy, to use the unfortunate term that your firm commonly uses in its publicity).</p>
-
-<p>You go on to say that: "The bill uses the concept of open source software incorrectly, since it does not necessarily imply that the software is free or of zero cost, and so arrives at mistaken conclusions regarding State savings, with no cost-benefit analysis to validate its position."</p>
-
-<p>This observation is wrong; in principle, freedom and lack of cost are orthogonal concepts: there is software which is proprietary and charged for (for example, MS Office), software which is proprietary and free of charge (MS Internet Explorer), software which is free and charged for (Red Hat, SuSE etc GNU/Linux distributions), software which is free and not charged for (Apache, Open Office, Mozilla), and even software which can be licensed in a range of combinations (MySQL).</p>
-
-<p>Certainly free software is not necessarily free of charge. And the text of the bill does not state that it has to be so, as you will have noted after reading it. The definitions included in the Bill state clearly *what* should be considered free software, at no point referring to freedom from charges. Although the possibility of savings in payments for proprietary software licenses are mentioned, the foundations of the bill clearly refer to the fundamental guarantees to be preserved and to the stimulus to local technological development. Given that a democratic State must support these principles, it has no other choice than to use software with publicly available source code, and to exchange information only in standard formats.</p>
-
-<p>If the State does not use software with these characteristics, it will be weakening basic republican principles. Luckily, free software also implies lower total costs; however, even given the hypothesis (easily disproved) that it was more expensive than proprietary software, the simple existence of an effective free software tool for a particular IT function would oblige the State to use it; not by command of this Bill, but because of the basic principles we enumerated at the start, and which arise from the very essence of the lawful democratic State.</p>
-
-<p>You continue: "6. It is wrong to think that Open Source Software is free of charge. Research by the Gartner Group (an important investigator of the technological market recognized at world level) has shown that the cost of purchase of software (operating system and applications) is only 8% of the total cost which firms and institutions take on for a rational and truly beneficial use of the technology. The other 92% consists of: installation costs, enabling, support, maintenance, administration, and down-time."</p>
-
-<p>This argument repeats that already given in paragraph 5 and partly contradicts paragraph 3. For the sake of brevity we refer to the comments on those paragraphs. However, allow me to point out that your conclusion is logically false: even if according to Gartner Group the cost of software is on average only 8% of the total cost of use, this does not in any way deny the existence of software which is free of charge, that is, with a licensing cost of zero.</p>
-
-<p>In addition, in this paragraph you correctly point out that the service components and losses due to down-time make up the largest part of the total cost of software use, which, as you will note, contradicts your statement regarding the small value of services suggested in paragraph 3. Now the use of free software contributes significantly to reduce the remaining life-cycle costs. This reduction in the costs of installation, support etc. can be noted in several areas: in the first place, the competitive service model of free software, support and maintenance for which can be freely contracted out to a range of suppliers competing on the grounds of quality and low cost. This is true for installation, enabling, and support, and in large part for maintenance. In the second place, due to the reproductive characteristics of the model, maintenance carried out for an application is easily replicable, without incurring large costs (that is, without paying more than once for the same thing) since modifications, if one wishes, can be incorporated in the common fund of knowledge. Thirdly, the huge costs caused by non-functioning software ("blue screens of death", malicious code such as virus, worms, and trojans, exceptions, general protection faults and other well-known problems) are reduced considerably by using more stable software; and it is well known that one of the most notable virtues of free software is its stability.</p>
-
-<p>You further state that: "7. One of the arguments behind the bill is the supposed freedom from costs of open-source software, compared with the costs of commercial software, without taking into account the fact that there exist types of volume licensing which can be highly advantageous for the State, as has happened in other countries."</p>
-
-<p>I have already pointed out that what is in question is not the cost of the software but the principles of freedom of information, accessibility, and security. These arguments have been covered extensively in the preceding paragraphs to which I would refer you.</p>
-
-<p>On the other hand, there certainly exist types of volume licensing (although unfortunately proprietary software does not satisfy the basic principles). But as you correctly pointed out in the immediately preceding paragraph of your letter, they only manage to reduce the impact of a component which makes up no more than 8% of the total.</p>
-
-<p>You continue: "8. In addition, the alternative adopted by the bill (I) is clearly more expensive, due to the high costs of software migration, and (II) puts at risk compatibility and interoperability of the IT platforms within the State, and between the State and the private sector, given the hundreds of versions of open source software on the market."</p>
-
-<p>Let us analyze your statement in two parts. Your first argument, that migration implies high costs, is in reality an argument in favor of the Bill. Because the more time goes by, the more difficult migration to another technology will become; and at the same time, the security risks associated with proprietary software will continue to increase. In this way, the use of proprietary systems and formats will make the State ever more dependent on specific suppliers. Once a policy of using free software has been established (which certainly, does imply some cost) then on the contrary migration from one system to another becomes very simple, since all data is stored in open formats. On the other hand, migration to an open software context implies no more costs than migration between two different proprietary software contexts, which invalidates your argument completely.</p>
-
-<p>The second argument refers to "problems in interoperability of the IT platforms within the State, and between the State and the private sector" This statement implies a certain lack of knowledge of the way in which free software is built, which does not maximize the dependence of the user on a particular platform, as normally happens in the realm of proprietary software. Even when there are multiple free software distributions, and numerous programs which can be used for the same function, interoperability is guaranteed as much by the use of standard formats, as required by the bill, as by the possibility of creating interoperable software given the availability of the source code.</p>
-
-<p>You then say that: "9. The majority of open source code does not offer adequate levels of service nor the guarantee from recognized manufacturers of high productivity on the part of the users, which has led various public organizations to retract their decision to go with an open source software solution and to use commercial software in its place."</p>
-
-<p>This observation is without foundation. In respect of the guarantee, your argument was rebutted in the response to paragraph 4. In respect of support services, it is possible to use free software without them (just as also happens with proprietary software), but anyone who does need them can obtain support separately, whether from local firms or from international corporations, again just as in the case of proprietary software.</p>
-
-<p>On the other hand, it would contribute greatly to our analysis if you could inform us about free software projects *established* in public bodies which have already been abandoned in favor of proprietary software. We know of a good number of cases where the opposite has taken place, but not know of any where what you describe has taken place.</p>
-
-<p>You continue by observing that: "10. The bill discourages the creativity of the Peruvian software industry, which invoices 40 million US$/year, exports 4 million US$ (10th in ranking among non-traditional exports, more than handicrafts) and is a source of highly qualified employment. With a law that encourages the use of open source, software programmers lose their intellectual property rights and their main source of payment."</p>
-
-<p>It is clear enough that nobody is forced to commercialize their code as free software. The only thing to take into account is that if it is not free software, it cannot be sold to the public sector. This is not in any case the main market for the national software industry. We covered some questions referring to the influence of the Bill on the generation of employment which would be both highly technically qualified and in better conditions for competition above, so it seems unnecessary to insist on this point.</p>
-
-<p>What follows in your statement is incorrect. On the one hand, no author of free software loses his intellectual property rights, unless he expressly wishes to place his work in the public domain. The free software movement has always been very respectful of intellectual property, and has generated widespread public recognition of its authors. Names like those of Richard Stallman, Linus Torvalds, Guido van Rossum, Larry Wall, Miguel de Icaza, Andrew Tridgell, Theo de Raadt, Andrea Arcangeli, Bruce Perens, Darren Reed, Alan Cox, Eric Raymond, and many others, are recognized world-wide for their contributions to the development of software that is used today by millions of people throughout the world. On the other hand, to say that the rewards for authors rights make up the main source of payment of Peruvian programmers is in any case a guess, in particular since there is no proof to this effect, nor a demonstration of how the use of free software by the State would influence these payments.</p>
-
-<p>You go on to say that: "11. Open source software, since it can be distributed without charge, does not allow the generation of income for its developers through exports. In this way, the multiplier effect of the sale of software to other countries is weakened, and so in turn is the growth of the industry, while Government rules ought on the contrary to stimulate local industry."</p>
-
-<p>This statement shows once again complete ignorance of the mechanisms of and market for free software. It tries to claim that the market of sale of non- exclusive rights for use (sale of licenses) is the only possible one for the software industry, when you yourself pointed out several paragraphs above that it is not even the most important one. The incentives that the bill offers for the growth of a supply of better qualified professionals, together with the increase in experience that working on a large scale with free software within the State will bring for Peruvian technicians, will place them in a highly competitive position to offer their services abroad.</p>
-
-<p>You then state that: "12. In the Forum, the use of open source software in education was discussed, without mentioning the complete collapse of this initiative in a country like Mexico, where precisely the State employees who founded the project now state that open source software did not make it possible to offer a learning experience to pupils in the schools, did not take into account the capability at a national level to give adequate support to the platform, and that the software did not and does not allow for the levels of platform integration that now exist in schools."</p>
-
-<p>In fact Mexico has gone into reverse with the Red Escolar (Schools Network) project. This is due precisely to the fact that the driving forces behind the Mexican project used license costs as their main argument, instead of the other reasons specified in our project, which are far more essential. Because of this conceptual mistake, and as a result of the lack of effective support from the SEP (Secretary of State for Public Education), the assumption was made that to implant free software in schools it would be enough to drop their software budget and send them a CD ROM with Gnu/Linux instead. Of course this failed, and it couldn't have been otherwise, just as school laboratories fail when they use proprietary software and have no budget for implementation and maintenance. That's exactly why our bill is not limited to making the use of free software mandatory, but recognizes the need to create a viable migration plan, in which the State undertakes the technical transition in an orderly way in order to then enjoy the advantages of free software.</p>
-
-<p>You end with a rhetorical question: "13. If open source software satisfies all the requirements of State bodies, why do you need a law to adopt it? Shouldn't it be the market which decides freely which products give most benefits or value?"</p>
-
-<p>We agree that in the private sector of the economy, it must be the market that decides which products to use, and no state interference is permissible there. However, in the case of the public sector, the reasoning is not the same: as we have already established, the state archives, handles, and transmits information which does not belong to it, but which is entrusted to it by citizens, who have no alternative under the rule of law. As a counterpart to this legal requirement, the State must take extreme measures to safeguard the integrity, confidentiality, and accessibility of this information. The use of proprietary software raises serious doubts as to whether these requirements can be fulfilled, lacks conclusive evidence in this respect, and so is not suitable for use in the public sector.</p>
-
-<p>The need for a law is based, firstly, on the realization of the fundamental principles listed above in the specific area of software; secondly, on the fact that the State is not an ideal homogeneous entity, but made up of multiple bodies with varying degrees of autonomy in decision making. Given that it is inappropriate to use proprietary software, the fact of establishing these rules in law will prevent the personal discretion of any state employee from putting at risk the information which belongs to citizens. And above all, because it constitutes an up-to-date reaffirmation in relation to the means of management and communication of information used today, it is based on the republican principle of openness to the public.</p>
-
-<p>In conformance with this universally accepted principle, the citizen has the right to know all information held by the State and not covered by well- founded declarations of secrecy based on law. Now, software deals with information and is itself information. Information in a special form, capable of being interpreted by a machine in order to execute actions, but crucial information all the same because the citizen has a legitimate right to know, for example, how his vote is computed or his taxes calculated. And for that he must have free access to the source code and be able to prove to his satisfaction the programs used for electoral computations or calculation of his taxes.</p>
-
-<p>I wish you the greatest respect, and would like to repeat that my office will always be open for you to expound your point of view to whatever level of detail you consider suitable.</p>
-
-<p>Cordially,<br>
-DR. EDGAR DAVID VILLANUEVA NUÑEZ<br>
-Congressman of the Republic of Perú.</p>
-</blockquote>
+<p><a href="http://www.getgnash.org/">The Gnash project</a> is still
+the most promising solution for a Free Software Flash implementation.
+A few days ago the project
+<a href="http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/gnash-dev/2011-04/msg00011.html">announced</a>
+that it will participate in Google Summer of Code. I hope many
+students apply, and that some of them succeed in getting AVM2 support
+into Gnash.</p>
</description>
</item>
<item>
- <title>Officeshots still going strong</title>
- <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Officeshots_still_going_strong.html</link>
- <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Officeshots_still_going_strong.html</guid>
- <pubDate>Sat, 25 Dec 2010 09:40:00 +0100</pubDate>
+ <title>I dag skal Stortinget votere over datalagringsdirektivet</title>
+ <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/I_dag_skal_Stortinget_votere_over_datalagringsdirektivet.html</link>
+ <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/I_dag_skal_Stortinget_votere_over_datalagringsdirektivet.html</guid>
+ <pubDate>Mon, 4 Apr 2011 07:40:00 +0200</pubDate>
<description>
-<p>Half a year ago I
-<a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Officeshots_taking_shape.html">wrote
-a bit</a> about <a href="http://www.officeshots.org/">OfficeShots</a>,
-a web service to allow anyone to test how ODF documents are handled by
-the different programs reading and writing the ODF format.</p>
-
-<p>I just had a look at the service, and it seem to be going strong.
-Very interesting to see the results reported in the gallery, how
-different Office implementations handle different ODF features. Sad
-to see that KOffice was not doing it very well, and happy to see that
-LibreOffice has been tested already (but sadly not listed as a option
-for OfficeShots users yet). I am glad to see that the ODF community
-got such a great test tool available.</p>
+<p>I dag ligger an til å bli en trist dag for Norge. I dag skal etter
+planen Stortinget stemme over om det skal innføres elektronisk brev-
+og besøkskontroll for hele folket, og Arbeiderpartiet og Høyre utgjør
+et flertall som har annonsert at de er enige om at dette skal gjøres.
+Konsekvensene for journaliststikken, organisasjonslivet,
+samfunnsikkerheten, personvernet og demokratiet er alvorlige, og jeg
+er bekymret hvor vi går etter dette.</p>
+
+<p>Både Høyre og Arbeiderpartiet forsøker seg på nytale og forklarer
+gang på gang å få folk til å tro at dette styrker personvernet, selv
+etter at datatilsynet som faginstans på området slo fast i januar
+<a href="http://www.datatilsynet.no/templates/Page____3661.aspx">at
+innføring av datalagringsdirektivet vil svekke personvernet</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Hva innebærer datalagringsdirektivet i praksis? Jeg kopierer
+likegodt
+<ahref="http://www.bekkelund.net/2011/02/16/den-usynlige-mannen/">en
+tekst fra Martin Bekkelund</a> i sin helhet:<p>
+
+<p><blockquote>
+
+<p>Fordi teknologien er usynlig, abstrakt, komplisert og utformet av
+mennesker, er det få som reflekterer over at teknologi kan være noe
+negativt, til tross for at intensjonene kanskje er gode.</p>
+
+<p>Det er mandag morgen, og du skal på jobb. Idet du kommer ut døra
+treffer du en velkledd mann i sort dress, hvit skjorte og et tynt,
+sort slips. Du ser på ham og han ser på deg gjennom et par store,
+mørke solbriller. I den venstre hånden holder han en notisblokk, i den
+høyre en penn. Han noterer noe på notisblokken og stikker den i
+lommen.</p>
+
+<p>Når du går nedover veien legger du merke til at mannen følger etter
+deg, mens han stadig noterer på notisblokken.</p>
+
+<p>Etter en stund har du fått nok og bestemmer deg for å konfrontere
+mannen med hans oppførsel. Hvorfor følger han etter deg? Og hva er det
+han noterer i notisblokken sin? Mannen gir deg et ignorant
+tusenmetersblikk gjennom de mørke solbrillene. Han svarer ikke.</p>
+
+<p>Det du ikke vet er at mannen er fra politiet, og er et ledd i
+myndighetenes nye satsing for å forhindre terror og alvorlig
+kriminalitet. De skal overvåke alle mennesker, uansett om de har gjort
+noe galt eller ei, for å sikre seg beviser i tilfelle du skulle gjøre
+noe galt.</p>
+
+<p>For oss som bor i et fritt samfunn hvor rettssikkerheten står
+sterkt høres dette helt usannsynlig ut. Vi ville aldri akseptert menn
+som følger etter og overvåker oss.</p>
+
+<p>Problemet er at mannen allerede eksisterer. Men det er en liten
+forskjell på mannen beskrevet i denne historien og mannen som allerede
+eksisterer. Han er usynlig, og finnes foreløpig kun i EU. Mannen som
+overvåker oss er ikke en mann av kjøtt og blod, men en usynlig robot
+som samler inn informasjon om hvordan vi bruker våre elektroniske
+hjelpemidler. Hver gang du ringer noen er han der og noterer seg hvem
+du ringer, når du ringer og hvor du befinner deg når samtalen tas. Det
+samme når du sender SMS, e-post eller bruker internett. Og med en
+smarttelefon i lomma blir vi gjenstand for kontinuerlig overvåking.</p>
+
+<p>Menn i mørke dresser og solbriller som overvåker oss i gatene er
+selvfølgelig uakseptabelt. Hvorfor skulle det være mer akseptabelt med
+samme overvåking bare fordi mannen er usynlig? Det er derfor du skal
+si nei til Datalagringsdirektivet som Arbeiderpartiet ønsker å innføre
+i disse dager.</p>
+</blockquote></p>
+
+<p>Det har kommet noen nye innspill i debatten de siste dagene. Her
+er noen aktuelle lenker, både nye og gamle:</p>
+
+<p><ul>
+
+<li><a href="http://www.digi.no/866595/dld-kan-utvides-i-det-stille">-
+ DLD kan utvides i det stille</a> - artikkel på digi.no der
+ jusprofessor Dag Wiese Schartum forteller at lovforslaget for å
+ innføre datalagringsdirektivet baserer seg på illusjoner og at
+ formuleringen om at det kan utvides med endring i forskrift og ved
+ enkeltvedtak gjør at omfanget av overvåkning kan gjøres i det stille
+ uten offentlige debatt.</li>
+
+<li><a href="http://www.digi.no/866530/stopper-dld-i-tsjekkia">Stopper
+ DLD i Tsjekkia</a> - artikkel på digi.no som forteller at
+ Grunnlovsdomstolen i Tsjekkia har avvist EUs kontroversielle
+ datalagringsarkiv.</li>
+
+<li><a href="http://www.digi.no/866305/slik-er-seks-maaneders-dld-data-i-praksis">Slik
+ er seks måneders DLD-data i praksis</a> - artikkel på digi.no som
+ forteller om en tysk politiker som har fått visualisert på kart med
+ kommentarer hva slags informasjonen som vil bli samlet inn hvis
+ datalagringsdirektivet innføres i Norge.</li>
+
+<li><a href="http://www.uhuru.biz/?p=685">Om å la politimyndigheter
+ avgjøre rettsstatens grenser – ny forskning</a> - bloggpost fra Jon
+ Wessel-Aas om hva som ligger bak forslag som
+ datalagringsdirektivet.</li>
+
+<li><a href="http://www.bekkelund.net/2011/04/01/styrke-personvernet/">Styrke
+ personvernet</a> - bloggpost hos Martin Bekkelund som i korte trekk
+ forklarer hvorfor datalagringsdirektivet ikke bedrer
+ personvernet.</li>
+
+<li><a href="http://www.uhuru.biz/?p=617">PST argumenterer selv best
+ mot datalagringsdirektivet</a> - bloggpost fra Jon Wessel-Aas om
+ hvordan PST motsier seg selv når de hevder det er en god ide å
+ innføre datalagringdirektivet.</li>
+
+<li><a href="http://www.digi.no/866580/feil-at-piratjakt-er-dld-motiv">-
+ Feil at piratjakt er DLD-motiv</a> - artikkel på digi.no der Høyre
+ som svar på observasjon fra Jon Wessel-Aas om at DLD vil bli brukt
+ til å ramme varslere og brudd på opphavsretten er at det ikke er
+ motivasjonen. Motivasjonen til Høyre er her irrelevant når det jo
+ snakkes om konsekvensen.
+
+</ul></p>
</description>
</item>
<item>
- <title>165 norske overvåkningskamera registert så langt i OpenStreetmap.org</title>
- <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/165_norske_overv__kningskamera_registert_s___langt_i_OpenStreetmap_org.html</link>
- <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/165_norske_overv__kningskamera_registert_s___langt_i_OpenStreetmap_org.html</guid>
- <pubDate>Fri, 24 Dec 2010 11:20:00 +0100</pubDate>
+ <title>A Norwegian FixMyStreet have kept me busy the last few weeks</title>
+ <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Norwegian_FixMyStreet_have_kept_me_busy_the_last_few_weeks.html</link>
+ <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Norwegian_FixMyStreet_have_kept_me_busy_the_last_few_weeks.html</guid>
+ <pubDate>Sun, 3 Apr 2011 22:50:00 +0200</pubDate>
<description>
-<p>Jeg flikket litt på OpenStreetmap.org i går, og oppdaget ved en
-tilfeldighet at det er en rekke noder som representerer
-overvåkningskamera som ikke blir med på kartet med overvåkningskamera
-i Norge som
-<a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Kart_over_overv__kningskamera_i_Norge.html">jeg
-laget</a> for snart to år siden. Fra før tok jeg med noder merket med
-man_made=surveillance, mens det er en rekke noder som kun er merket
-med highway=speed_camera. Endret på koden som henter ut kameralisten
-fra OSM, og vips er antall kamera økt til 165.</p>
-
-<a href="http://people.skolelinux.no/pere/surveillance-norway/">Kartet</a>
-er fortsatt ikke komplett, så hvis du ser noen kamera som mangler,
-legg inn ved å følge instruksene fra
-<a href="http://personvern.no/wiki/index.php/Kameraovervåkning">prosjektsiden</a>.
-Hvis du vet om noen flere måter å merke overvåkningskamera i OSM, ta
-kontakt slik at jeg kan få med også disse.</p>
+<p>Here is a small update for my English readers. Most of my blog
+posts have been in Norwegian the last few weeks, so here is a short
+update in English.</p>
+
+<p>The kids still keep me too busy to get much free software work
+done, but I did manage to organise a project to get a Norwegian port
+of the British service
+<a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com/">FixMyStreet</a> up and running,
+and it has been running for a month now. The entire project has been
+organised by me and two others. Around Christmas we gathered sponsors
+to fund the development work. In January I drafted a contract with
+<a href="http://www.mysociety.org/">mySociety</a> on what to develop,
+and in February the development took place. Most of it involved
+converting the source to use GPS coordinates instead of British
+easting/northing, and the resulting code should be a lot easier to get
+running in any country by now. The Norwegian
+<a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</a> is using
+<a href="http://www.openstreetmap.org/">OpenStreetmap</a> as the map
+source and the source for administrative borders in Norway, and
+support for this had to be added/fixed.</p>
+
+<p>The Norwegian version went live March 3th, and we spent the weekend
+polishing the system before we announced it March 7th. The system is
+running on a KVM instance of Debian/Squeeze, and has seen almost 3000
+problem reports in a few weeks. Soon we hope to announce the Android
+and iPhone versions making it even easier to report problems with the
+public infrastructure.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps something to consider for those of you in countries without
+such service?</p>
</description>
</item>
<item>
- <title>How to test if a laptop is working with Linux</title>
- <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_test_if_a_laptop_is_working_with_Linux.html</link>
- <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_test_if_a_laptop_is_working_with_Linux.html</guid>
- <pubDate>Wed, 22 Dec 2010 14:55:00 +0100</pubDate>
+ <title>Datalagringsdirektivet, et angrep på demokratiet</title>
+ <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Datalagringsdirektivet__et_angrep_p___demokratiet.html</link>
+ <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Datalagringsdirektivet__et_angrep_p___demokratiet.html</guid>
+ <pubDate>Wed, 30 Mar 2011 14:40:00 +0200</pubDate>
<description>
-<p>The last few days I have spent at work here at the <a
-href="http://www.uio.no/">University of oslo</a> testing if the new
-batch of computers will work with Linux. Every year for the last few
-years the university have organized shared bid of a few thousand
-computers, and this year HP won the bid. Two different desktops and
-five different laptops are on the list this year. We in the UNIX
-group want to know which one of these computers work well with RHEL
-and Ubuntu, the two Linux distributions we currently handle at the
-university.</p>
-
-<p>My test method is simple, and I share it here to get feedback and
-perhaps inspire others to test hardware as well. To test, I PXE
-install the OS version of choice, and log in as my normal user and run
-a few applications and plug in selected pieces of hardware. When
-something fail, I make a note about this in the test matrix and move
-on. If I have some spare time I try to report the bug to the OS
-vendor, but as I only have the machines for a short time, I rarely
-have the time to do this for all the problems I find.</p>
-
-<p>Anyway, to get to the point of this post. Here is the simple tests
-I perform on a new model.</p>
+<p>I 2005 fortalte
+<a href="http://liberal.no/2010/03/politiets-fellesforbund-taler-med-to-tunger-om-datalagringsdirektivet/">politiets
+fellesforbund</a> til stortinget at de måtte få lov til å bruke
+romavlytting pga. at de som drev med alvorlig kriminalitet ikke brukte
+telefon og elektronisk kommunikasjon til å planlegge og gjennomføre sine
+forbrytelser, mens i 2011 forsøker de å få oss til å tro at slik bruk
+gjør at datalagringsdirektivet er nødvendig. Jeg tror mer på dem i
+2005 enn i dag.</p>
+
+<p>Det er ingen forskning som dokumenterer at datalagringsdirektivet
+vil øke oppklaringsprosenten for politiet, mens det er mye forskning
+som dokumentere at det vil ha negativ effekt på det frie demokratiske
+samfunnet.</p>
+
+<p>Nok tørrprat, her er en liten lenkeliste med interessante tekster
+om datalagring og kriminalitetsbekjempelse.</p>
<ul>
-<li>Is PXE installation working? I'm testing with RHEL6, Ubuntu Lucid
-and Ubuntu Maverik at the moment. If I feel like it, I also test with
-RHEL5 and Debian Edu/Squeeze.</li>
-
-<li>Is X.org working? If the graphical login screen show up after
-installation, X.org is working.</li>
-
-<li>Is hardware accelerated OpenGL working? Running glxgears (in
-package mesa-utils on Ubuntu) and writing down the frames per second
-reported by the program.</li>
+<li><a href="http://www.digi.no/866306/dld-et-vaapen-mot-varslere">DLD
+ - et våpen mot varslere</a> artikkel på digi.no om innspill fra
+ advokan Jon Wessel-Aas.</li>
-<li>Is sound working? With Gnome and KDE, a sound is played when
-logging in, and if I can hear this the test is successful. If there
-are several audio exits on the machine, I try them all and check if
-the Gnome/KDE audio mixer can control where to send the sound. I
-normally test this by playing
-<a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20101012-chef/ ">a HTML5
-video</a> in Firefox/Iceweasel.</li>
+<li><a href="http://www.uhuru.biz/?p=662">Skal Telenor forsvare statens
+ bevisregister i retten?</a> - bloggpost fra Jon Wessel-Aas om
+ hvordan det vil arte seg når kundene saksøker sin ISP for brudd på
+ personvernreglene og menneskerettighetene hvis de følger ekomloven
+ om datalagringsdirektivet blir innført</li>
-<li>Is the USB subsystem working? I test this by plugging in a USB
-memory stick and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.</li>
+<li><a href="http://www.uhuru.biz/?p=666">Per Kristian Foss og Bent
+ Høie forsøker å forsvare DLD</a> - blogpost fra Jon Wessel-Aas om
+ det dårlige forsvaret for DLD fra dets forkjempere.</li>
-<li>Is the CD/DVD player working? I test this by inserting any CD/DVD
-I have lying around, and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.</li>
+<li><a href="http://vampus.blogspot.com/2011/03/politi-og-overgripere-en-hemmelig.html">Politi
+ og overgripere - en hemmelig historie</a> - blogpost fra Heidi
+ Nordby Lunde om hvordan politiet ikke bruker de mulighetene de har i
+ dag.</li>
-<li>Is any built in camera working? Test using cheese, and see if a
-picture from the v4l device show up.</li>
+<li><a href="http://batcheeba93.blogspot.com/2011/03/hvem-svikter-barna.html">Hvem
+ svikter barna?</a>- blogpost fra "Batcheeba" om hvordan innføring
+ av DLD vil stille sårbare barn i en enda vanskeligere
+ situasjon.</li>
-<li>Is bluetooth working? Use the Gnome/KDE browsing tool to see if
-any bluetooth devices are discovered. In my office, I normally see a
-few.</li>
-
-<li>For laptops, is the SD or Compaq Flash reader working. I have
-memory modules lying around, and stick them in and see if Gnome/KDE
-notice this.</li>
-
-<li>For laptops, is suspecd/hibernate working? I'm testing if the
-special button work, and if the laptop continue to work after
-resume.</li>
-
-<li>For laptops, is the extra buttons working, like audio level,
-adjusting background light, switching on/off external video output,
-switching on/off wifi, bluetooth, etc? The set of buttons differ from
-laptop to laptop, so I just write down which are working and which are
-not.</li>
-
-<li>Some laptops have smart card readers, finger print readers,
-acceleration sensors etc. I rarely test these, as I do not know how
-to quickly test if they are working or not, so I only document their
-existence.</li>
+<li><a href="http://www.digi.no/866369/intet-aa-skjule-%3D-intet-aa-frykte">Intet
+ å skjule = intet å frykte?<a> - kronikk av Sigbjørn Vik hos digi.no som
+ forklarer litt om hvorfor datalagringsdirektivet er et angrep på
+ demokratiet.</li>
</ul>
-<p>By now I suspect you are really curious what the test results are
-for the HP machines I am testing. I'm not done yet, so I will report
-the test results later. For now I can report that HP 8100 Elite work
-fine, and hibernation fail with HP EliteBook 8440p on Ubuntu Lucid,
-and audio fail on RHEL6. Ubuntu Maverik worked with 8440p. As you
-can see, I have most machines left to test. One interesting
-observation is that Ubuntu Lucid has almost twice the framerate than
-RHEL6 with glxgears. No idea why.</p>
-</description>
- </item>
-
- <item>
- <title>Some thoughts on BitCoins</title>
- <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Some_thoughts_on_BitCoins.html</link>
- <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Some_thoughts_on_BitCoins.html</guid>
- <pubDate>Sat, 11 Dec 2010 15:10:00 +0100</pubDate>
- <description>
-<p>As I continue to explore
-<a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">BitCoin</a>, I've starting to wonder
-what properties the system have, and how it will be affected by laws
-and regulations here in Norway. Here are some random notes.</p>
-
-<p>One interesting thing to note is that since the transactions are
-verified using a peer to peer network, all details about a transaction
-is known to everyone. This means that if a BitCoin address has been
-published like I did with mine in my initial post about BitCoin, it is
-possible for everyone to see how many BitCoins have been transfered to
-that address. There is even a web service to look at the details for
-all transactions. There I can see that my address
-<a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a>
-have received 16.06 Bitcoin, the
-<a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv8MHqvwst3">1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv8MHqvwst3</a>
-address of Simon Phipps have received 181.97 BitCoin and the address
-<a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt">1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt</A>
-of EFF have received 2447.38 BitCoins so far. Thank you to each and
-every one of you that donated bitcoins to support my activity. The
-fact that anyone can see how much money was transfered to a given
-address make it more obvious why the BitCoin community recommend to
-generate and hand out a new address for each transaction. I'm told
-there is no way to track which addresses belong to a given person or
-organisation without the person or organisation revealing it
-themselves, as Simon, EFF and I have done.</p>
-
-<p>In Norway, and in most other countries, there are laws and
-regulations limiting how much money one can transfer across the border
-without declaring it. There are money laundering, tax and accounting
-laws and regulations I would expect to apply to the use of BitCoin.
-If the Skolelinux foundation
-(<a href="http://linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">SLX
-Debian Labs</a>) were to accept donations in BitCoin in addition to
-normal bank transfers like EFF is doing, how should this be accounted?
-Given that it is impossible to know if money can across the border or
-not, should everything or nothing be declared? What exchange rate
-should be used when calculating taxes? Would receivers have to pay
-income tax if the foundation were to pay Skolelinux contributors in
-BitCoin? I have no idea, but it would be interesting to know.</p>
-
-<p>For a currency to be useful and successful, it must be trusted and
-accepted by a lot of users. It must be possible to get easy access to
-the currency (as a wage or using currency exchanges), and it must be
-easy to spend it. At the moment BitCoin seem fairly easy to get
-access to, but there are very few places to spend it. I am not really
-a regular user of any of the vendor types currently accepting BitCoin,
-so I wonder when my kind of shop would start accepting BitCoins. I
-would like to buy electronics, travels and subway tickets, not herbs
-and books. :) The currency is young, and this will improve over time
-if it become popular, but I suspect regular banks will start to lobby
-to get BitCoin declared illegal if it become popular. I'm sure they
-will claim it is helping fund terrorism and money laundering (which
-probably would be true, as is any currency in existence), but I
-believe the problems should be solved elsewhere and not by blaming
-currencies.</p>
-
-<p>The process of creating new BitCoins is called mining, and it is
-CPU intensive process that depend on a bit of luck as well (as one is
-competing against all the other miners currently spending CPU cycles
-to see which one get the next lump of cash). The "winner" get 50
-BitCoin when this happen. Yesterday I came across the obvious way to
-join forces to increase ones changes of getting at least some coins,
-by coordinating the work on mining BitCoins across several machines
-and people, and sharing the result if one is lucky and get the 50
-BitCoins. Check out
-<a href="http://www.bluishcoder.co.nz/bitcoin-pool/">BitCoin Pool</a>
-if this sounds interesting. I have not had time to try to set up a
-machine to participate there yet, but have seen that running on ones
-own for a few days have not yield any BitCoins througth mining
-yet.</p>
-
-<p>Update 2010-12-15: Found an <a
-href="http://inertia.posterous.com/reply-to-the-underground-economist-why-bitcoi">interesting
-criticism</a> of bitcoin. Not quite sure how valid it is, but thought
-it was interesting to read. The arguments presented seem to be
-equally valid for gold, which was used as a currency for many years.</p>
+<p>Det er demonstrasjon mot datalagringsdirektivet i flere norske byer
+i dag. Ta en titt på
+<a href="http://stoppdld.no/2011/03/28/demonstrasjon-mot-dld/">informasjon
+fra Stopp DLD-organisasjonen</a> for mer informasjon om dette.</p>
</description>
</item>
<item>
- <title>Pornoskannerne på flyplassene bedrer visst ikke sikkerheten</title>
- <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Pornoskannerne_p___flyplassene_bedrer_visst_ikke_sikkerheten.html</link>
- <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Pornoskannerne_p___flyplassene_bedrer_visst_ikke_sikkerheten.html</guid>
- <pubDate>Sat, 11 Dec 2010 10:45:00 +0100</pubDate>
+ <title>Det totalitære samfunn kommer stadig nærmere</title>
+ <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Det_totalit__re_samfunn_kommer_stadig_n__rmere.html</link>
+ <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Det_totalit__re_samfunn_kommer_stadig_n__rmere.html</guid>
+ <pubDate>Mon, 28 Mar 2011 14:10:00 +0200</pubDate>
<description>
-<p>Via <a href="http://webmink.com/2010/12/10/links-for-2010-12-10/">en
-blogpost fra Simon Phipps i går</a>, fant jeg en referanse til
-<a href="http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/dec/9/exposed-tsas-x-rated-scanner-fraud/">en
-artikkel i Washington Times</a> som igjen refererer til en artikkel i
-det fagfellevurderte tidsskriftet Journal of Transportation Security
-med tittelen
-"<a href="http://springerlink.com/content/g6620thk08679160/fulltext.html">An
-evaluation of airport x-ray backscatter units based on image
-characteristics</a>" som enkelt konstaterer at
-<a href="http://www.dailysquib.co.uk/?a=2389&c=124">pornoscannerne</a>
-som kler av reisende på flyplasser ikke er i stand til å avsløre det
-produsenten og amerikanske myndigheter sier de skal avsløre. Kort
-sagt, de bedrer ikke sikkerheten. Reisende må altså la ansatte på
-flyplasser <a href="http://www.thousandsstandingaround.org/">se dem
-nakne eller la seg beføle i skrittet</a> uten grunn. Jeg vil
-fortsette å nekte å bruke disse pornoskannerne, unngå flyplasser der
-de er tatt i bruk, og reise med andre transportmidler enn fly hvis jeg
-kan.</p>
+<p>Høyre har i dag annonsert at
+<a href="http://www.vg.no/nyheter/innenriks/norsk-politikk/artikkel.php?artid=10099645">de
+ønsker det totalitære samfunn velkommen</a>, der innbyggerne overvåkes
+og hvem en kommuniserer med registreres av myndighetene i tilfelle vi
+gjør noe galt. Ingenting tyder på at datalagringsdirektivet har
+kriminalforebyggende effekt, og en må dermed gå ut ifra at det ikke er
+det som er den egentlige begrunnelsen til Arbeiderpartiet og Høyre når
+de velger å støtte slik massiv overvåkning av borgere som ikke er
+mistenkt for noe kriminelt.</p>
+
+<p>Mitt lille prosjekt for å motvirke overvåkningssamfunnet,
+innsamling av informasjon om alle overvåkningskamera i det offentlige
+rom, rusler videre. Nå er det 96 automatiske trafikkkontroll-kamera
+registrert og 105 andre overvåkningskamera. Kun 29 personer har så
+langt bidratt, og det er bare toppen av isfjellet som er registrert.
+Hvis du vet om et overvåkningskamera i ditt lokalområde, sjekk kartet
+og få det registrert i OpenStreetmap hvis det mangler.</p>
+
+<p>For noen dager siden ble jeg oppmerksom på en undersøkelse som
+datatilsynet gjorde i 2009, der de oppdaget at 81% av alle
+overvåkningskamera i Oslo sentrum var satt opp i strid med reglene.
+Basert på den undersøkelsen kan en dermed gå ut ifra at de aller
+fleste overvåkningskamera er lovstridige. Jeg håper vi kan få
+kartlagt alle lovstridige kamera og bruke denne informasjonen til å få
+gjort noe med dagens massive overvåkning.</p>
+
+<p><a href="http://nrkbeta.no/2009/10/15/kamera-overalt/">En
+undersøkelse fra Ås i fjor</a> viste at det er umulig å gå inn til
+Oslo sentrum uten å bli overvåket. Det er blitt verre siden den gang.
+F.eks. vet jeg at politiet har montert overvåkningskamera på
+Nasjonalteateret og Universitetesbygningen ved Karl Johansgate i
+forbindelse med VM på ski. Det er intet som tyder på at de kommer til
+å fjerne dem nå når VM er over.</p>
+
+<p>Mitt utgangspunkt er at overvåkningskamera ikke har dokumentert
+kriminalitetsbekjempende effekt (hvis de fungerte skulle Oslo
+Sentralstasjon være det minst kriminelt belastede området i Norge),
+men derimot angriper borgernes rett til å ferdes anonymt i det
+offentlige rom.</p>
+
+<p><a href="http://people.skolelinux.no/pere/surveillance-norway/">Kartet
+over overvåkningskamera</a> er fortsatt ikke komplett, så hvis du ser
+noen kamera som mangler, legg inn ved å følge instruksene fra <a
+href="http://personvern.no/wiki/index.php/Kameraovervåkning">prosjektsiden</a>.
+Hvis du vet om noen flere måter å merke overvåkningskamera i OSM,
+ta kontakt slik at jeg kan få med også disse.</p>
</description>
</item>