Libervis.com Archive

Bytemark

Is Bytemark the right hosting server for you, GNU/Linux lover?

We interviewed Matthew Bloch, one of the founders of British hosting company, Bytemark. He talks about his company, and their commitment to free software. You be the judge!

Rule #2: Create a community

The“edge” for free software over proprietary software comes from volunteer effort. You should spend just as much effort on designing a comfortable and inviting project as you would on any consumer establishment: you may not be trying to convince customers to part with cash for your product, but youareasking volunteers to part with their time for your project (which is not easier).

Unjustifiable Criticism of Richard Stallman by Linus Torvalds

A recent attack piece against Richard Stallman was written by Linus Torvalds on the eve of Obama’s election.

Black and whiteby Linus Torvalds

Linus begins with this:

So I’m pretty well-known for not exactly being a huge fan of the FSF and Richard Stallman, despite the fact that I obviously love the GPLv2 and use it as the license for all my projects that I care about.

How unfortunate to write negatively of Stallman in the very first sentence.

Creating a multilingual website with Smarty

Some time ago I was required to adapt a bespoke website application (which I had originally written) so it not only supported multiple languages but also multiple character sets. The website,MakingContact.org, is a on-line community for families with disabled children run by the charityContact a Family. It required“support” for four languages in addition the English it was currently in: Somali, Arabic, Farsi and Simplified Chinese. Yes, I know the latter is not actually a language but for these purposes the cap fitted.

I decided to do it usingSmarty, the PHP-based templating engine. Whilst it was possible that a CMS or similar could do the job now, at the time I could find none which supported multiple character sets in the way I required. I’ve been meaning to write the process down for some time so here’s how I did it.

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Latest from the Bizarre Cathedral.

Social Marketing Examples on Mashable

Mashable has an interesting summary of social media marketing examples. I find it helpful for talking about some of the kinds of marketing that is worthwhile in the digital marketing space beyond traditional banner advertising (which is annoying).

Mixing free and proprietary software: not a rosy future

A recent article caught my eye and turned it a nice shade of red. It discussed the— hardly new— idea that the future of software usage must involve a mixture of free and proprietary products— something the writer refers to as“mixed source”. The piece was entitled“Mixed source - the best of both worlds” which may give you a clue as to where I disagree with it.

The article was an opinion piece by Steve Harris, senior director for open source products at Novell in issue 78 of Linux User& Developer magazine. Sadly it’s not yet available on-line and I don’t honestly know if it will be. If it is I’ll post a comment with a link here so you can read it for yourself.

Reality Art meets Google Street View in Pittsburgh

Via Adverblog, check this interesting approach to bring a long street in Pittsburgh to life through Google Maps Street View.

RiP: a Remix Manifesto

Seems like a solid video project on the evolution of remix culture.

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Latest from the Bizarre Cathedral.

Songbird plus Mozilla, the ultimate media mashup for your music

GNU/Linux has come a long way since XMMS, the Winamp wannabe. The number of free media players has bloomed: Amarok, Banshee, Rhythmbox, Kaffeine, Kplayer and JuK. They have enough features to cater for every need a dedicated music lover could wish for. So Songbird, which is not even at version 1.0, would have its work cut out to rival those media players especially the ability to play video as well as music. But Songbird has one unique feature. It has a built-in browser, Mozilla, which allows it to extract maximum mileage from your music collection. Web integration leverages your music and allows you to do some really great stuff. This article will look at the features of Songbird that make it an essential addition to any installation.

OpenSocial overview: how opensocial works, and how to integrate it with your CMS

So, you’ve heard about Google’s free software release of its Gadgets server, and the new“Open Social API”. And gosh, wouldn’t it be nice if you could provide this technology to your users with your favorite free software Content Management System (CMS)? Since the documentation that comes bundled with Google’s release will probably give you simultaneous whiplash and vertigo (with a large side of frustration), here’s a breakdown of the problem so you’ll know what you’re up against, how to go about solving the problem, and plenty of free software resources to help you get there.

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Latest from the Bizarre Cathedral.

FSM Newsletter 02 November 2008

Hello readers, and welcome once again toFree Software Magazine‘s fortnightly newsletter, keeping you up to date with all things free software… AND the top 10 FSDaily announcements for this week! Enjoy!

Crossweavers Chromium: some wine to go with your chrome sir (and some bugs too)?

A few weeks agoI discussed the main features of the Chrome browserand Google’s motives; at that point I was like the poor child, nose pressed against the window pane, looking inside at the sumptuous feast at the master’s table. I, like all GNU/Linux users, hadn’t been invited. Same as ever. Crossweavers decided to gate crash the party and bring their own drink too. In short, in just eleven days from the launch of Chrome they built a version running under Wine, and although their products are proprietary and they usually reciprocate by giving code back to free software likeWine, this time they gave it away for free. Thus did Chrome become Chromium and I had a chance to download and install it. Reader, I benchtested it.

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Latest from the Bizarre Cathedral.

Politics of Participation - Podcast with Robert Stromberg

The second 'active conversation' of the 2nd season of the activefree podcast is with another college friend Robert Stromberg, , who I knew as a media activist man of action back during college at Duke and more recently visited in Knoxville, TN during my Free Culture tour in 2005.

Our phone conversation, recorded back July through FreeConference.com (unfortunately the quality of the audio is less than ideal), covers some of his background working with the Barack Obama campaign on the ground in North Carolina, and why he thinks that the approach of the campaign, if successful, may result in more long term participation than previous campaigns.

Download from the podcast.

Photograph "Thinking Obama" thanks to cfrye6395 via Creative Commons Search.

Creating a user-centric site in Drupal

A little while ago, while talking in the #drupal mailing list, I showed my latest creation to one of the core developers there. His reaction was“Wow, I am always surprised what people use Drupal for”. His surprise is somehow justified: I did create a site for a bunch ofstrippers in Perth. Yes, I would classify the linkquitework-safe.

After talking about it for a while, I decided that it would be a good idea to write a short case study about how I created the site. So, here we go.

The constraints

The site needed to be hosted in Perth.

Why is The Bizarre Cathedral licence"non-free"?

For the past 26 weeks I’ve been producing the Bizarre Cathedral strips for Free Software Magazine. Every one of them is released under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-commerical-Share Alike (BY-NC-SA) licence. Recently I’ve received a few pieces of mail saying this is a“non-free” licence and questioning my use of it here. Some of them are quite polite, others have demanded I change the licence immediately (presumably“or else”). I’m not going to change the license, and here’s why.

Deploying CC+ for the common good: Buy4Commons

This year, Creative Commons unveiled a new initiative called“CC+”. It isnota license. It’s a“protocol”, although it’s so simple that it almost doesn’t warrant the term. Basically it specifies a standardized mechanism to sell further rights for works under Creative Commons licenses. One application of this technology could be to enable“collective patronage” models like the one that brought us the Blender free movies to be extended to amuchlarger pool of Creative Commons licensed material.