nanda's page

Gostaria de informar a todas (se alguma) pessoas que lêem o meu blog, que me desliguei da FSFLA oficialmente no dia de ontem. Após 4 anos de trabalho, devo dizer que infelizmente uma sucessão de erros acabou por levar, pela minha leitura, o projeto FSFLA a fracassar.

Eu me sentia despreparada para fazer isso, e realmente estava. Não tive a calma que deveria ter quando enfrentei problemas, e diante dele, acabei reforcando problemas comportamentais que resultaram na minha saída da organizacão. Para quem já participou de alguma lista de discussão da comunidade, inlcluinso Solar, PSL Brasil, FLISOL ou LKLM, eu não preciso dizer muito mais.

Aceito a minha parcela de culpa por ter influenciado muito diretamente na decisão que fez com que acabássemos onde estávamos até o dia de ontem. Comigo, também se desliga da FSFLA o meu grande amigo Pedro Rezende, por motivos similares.

Enfim, a luta pela liberdade continua, com outros rótulos, e talvez com mais do que somente rótulos. Aqui vai o email que eu enviei ontem para o time, e depois dele, uma letra de uma música de Ivan Lins

************************
de Fernanda G Weiden
para FSFLA team
cc "prezende"
data 21/02/2008 23:54
assunto Thank you, and farewell
enviado por gmail.com

Hi people,
I am writing only to fsfla's team mailing list, but if you want to
forward this email, please go ahead. It is not a confidential message.

I am writing today on behalf of Pedro and myself, to let you all know
that we are leaving the board of directors of FSFLA. Pedro has given
me all powers to speak on his behalf on this subject.

The reasoning behind that is known for most of you: we cannot take the
modus operandi of this team anymore. We have seen the same kind of
cycle over and over again for the past years, and unfortunately, we
cannot do anything to change it.

Almost a year ago, when both of us thought about leaving FSFLA, we
decided to contact our fellow board member, explaining why we were so
unhappy with the ways things were moving, and also stating what other
people has foreseen before: that in the future, similar situation
would came true again, but saying that when that happened, we would
put the board positions in question.

And now we see the same happening again. This time we'll not fight to
the end to proof ourselves not being the bad guys. Or trying to

Pedro is ill and needs to focus on recovering -- I suggested him to
write a book, and I am trying to help organizing the International
Free Software Forum. Our work for the Free Software community is not
over, we'll keep doing it for sure.

I would like to thank Richard and Georg for depositing trust on me to
work on this project, and apologize for not being able to accomplish
the task that was given to me. If either FSF or FSFE needs my help, do
not hesitate in contacting me, and I will be glad to help. I still
feel committed and motivated by the mission of the FSFs.

Please board members, organize so my email is forwarded to
fernanda@softwarelivre.org, for a while, so I don't lose the messages
someone may send me. Pedro's personal email is prezende@unb.br. You
can proceed and unsubscribe me from all the mailing lists. You can
either do the same with Pedro, or wait for him to confirm my request,
as you wish.

It was a pleasure to work with you guys so far, and I wish you find
the way to make this work.

Fernanda Weiden

--
Speakers' Team

International Free Software Forum 2008
17th to 19th of April, Porto Alegre, Brazil
http://fisl.softwarelivre.org
************************
No novo tempo, apesar dos castigos
Estamos crescidos, estamos atentos, estamos mais vivos
Pra nos socorrer, pra nos socorrer, pra nos socorrer
No novo tempo, apesar dos perigos
Da força mais bruta, da noite que assusta, estamos na luta
Pra sobreviver, pra sobreviver, pra sobreviver
Pra que nossa esperança seja mais que a vingança
Seja sempre um caminho que se deixa de herança
No novo tempo, apesar dos castigos
De toda fadiga, de toda injustiça, estamos na briga
Pra nos socorrer, pra nos socorrer, pra nos socorrer
No novo tempo, apesar dos perigos
De todos os pecados, de todos enganos, estamos marcados
Pra sobreviver, pra sobreviver, pra sobreviver
No novo tempo, apesar dos castigos
Estamos em cena, estamos nas ruas, quebrando as algemas
Pra nos socorrer, pra nos socorrer, pra nos socorrer
No novo tempo, apesar dos perigos
A gente se encontra cantando na praça, fazendo pirraça

After I get involved with the Free Software community, I started also to get interested on Copyright concept, laws, access to knowledge, among other things. The most visible effect to all that is: now I pay more attention to the very small letters in the back side of the DVD and CD cases, and also to the "patented" sign in some of the most stupid things ever: like the container where we throw away the glass.

I love music, therefore music is very present in my life. I download a lot of musics from the internet, I share music with my friends, and yes, I buy CDs, and now that I am living in Europe and there is nothing in Portuguese going on on the TV, I buy tons of music DVDs when I go to Brasil.

The last ones were Maria Rita - Segundo, which is a case with a music CD (not protected my DRM) and a DVD with the "making of" of the music CD production.

In the back side of the DVD case usually there are those very small letters saying things like: "Warning: the DVD is protected by law and authorized for home use only. Any unauthorized copying, hiring, lending, distribution, exporting, importing, dissemination, exhibition or public performance is prohibited by law."

I have to say that I think this is completly non-sense, but well, it is the "law" or the way the companies wants to control their rights over the content.

And when we think our "friends" from the music industry reached their limits, they go beyond: the Maria Rita's CD I bought comes with a short, althought more restrictive note in the back side of the case: "WARNING: All rights reserved. The partial or integral reproduction of this DVD is expressly prohibited. The infringers are subjected to penalties provisioned by law"

This means, simply and clearly: I cannot play my own DVD! It would be funny, if it wasn't tragic.

Ladies and gentlemans, let me introduce to you Lookright, by Warner.

During FISL, David "Novalis" Turner and Georg Greve showed me that I was completly wrong about Ubuntu and that it indeed contains proprietary software.

 Well, i checked whether I had the package they found in the CD, and since I was not using that package, I thought I was free (as in freedom).

 After that, I started to pay more attention to the Ubuntu Policies, what that restricted session means, etc.

 Today, when I received my really nice and new computer, I decided to try again Ubuntu, and then, after the installation completes, I removed the packages that has this description:

 Non-free Linux 2.6.15 modules on PPro/Celeron/PII/PIII/PIV

and

Restricted Linux modules on PPro/Celeron/PII/PIII/PIV

 Guess what???

 Bingo! The dependencies of those packages removed also the kernel. Who needs a kernel, after all?

So, I am not wondering whether there is an easy way to install Ubuntu without the proprietary package, or if the lies in the CD are not only about incuding non-free software, but also about not having even the option to delete them!!!

I am feeling free as in Mark Shuttleworth...whatever it means....

On the next april, FISL will take place for the 7th time in Porto Alegre/RS Brasil. FISL has consolidated itself as the biggest and most important Free Software event in Latin America, one of the coolest event in the world, as said by Georg Greve and other people who have been to most of Free Software conferences around the world.

 It is an event that shows how to practice social responsability in its local community: every year FISL uses part of the subscription fee value to buy not perishable foods and donate it to local groups that fight against hunger in Brazil. Last year, FISL's organisers donated more than 11,5 tons of food and 3 tons of seeds that could be used to plant and produce 3000 tons of food.

 Besides the solidarity numbers, FISL had more than 4.5 thousand atendees. 13,54% are women. A number that will hopefully increase, but even being small, is better than the number of other conferences I have attended. Last year more than 12000 different connections were received on the streaming servers, and there were 12 primary replicators.

 This will be the second year that FISL will transmit all its sessions by internet, using the Free Software TV, but there are limitations of bandwidth that may make it difficult to happen, or very limited. All the transmission is made using Free (as in freedom) encoders for audio and video, and there is no need for disk space: only bandwidth.

 So, if you or your organisation have good internet bandwidth available, please contact me (nanda at fsfe dot org) and let me put you in contact with the organisers in order to make this event available to as much people as we can.

Actually are not bananas exactly, but I am writing today to announce the new FSFLA's website, I just thought the bananas would be more attractive. :)

If you're curious, try to access: http://www.fsfla.org -- I hope our DNS is already propagated to yours.

Thanks FSFE for providing the vserver, and Jonas, who was really patient with me :)

 

I fortgot to blog about it few days ago, but the morning's experience I had today made me remind this subject :)

Here in Hamburg, the metro (subway, s-bahn, u-bahn, whatever) really works. It is irritatingly in time, and all the station have plates with a minutes countdown. There's no ticket control to get in the train, but if you "forget" to pay and someone ask you for the ticket, then you would pay much more.

It's incredible, eveybody buy tickets!!! Including me :-D

I imagine this kind of system in the Sao Paulo's metro, for instance....heheheh

But sometimes the train delays. That already happened with me twice, I guess. The reason: people jump in front of the train trying to kill themselves.

I thought it was a joke, but a couple of days ago I was in the metro coming to the FSFE's office and when the train supposed to go straight to stop in the station, it got another rail and stopped in other place. Georg said "it is strange, the train always stops in the other side". Well, when we were walking in the station, he saw the ambulance, few police people and said: "ah, someone jumped in front of the train, again". With a weird naturalitty in his voice!!! I got stalled, and asked "WHAT????!!!" How could people decide to kill themselves jumping in front of the trains?? And worst: How can the others think that it is normal???

If you have been in Brazil, and saw an accident on the transit, for instance, you noticed lots of people standing around willing to see whether the person is bleeding, or lost a leg, or died. Here it doesn't happen!!! Nobody stops to ask whether the criature is still alive or not!

Well, this morning I was again in the train, coming to the FSFE's office again. The sound system start to announce something different, then I asked Georg: what happened? (Since I cannot -- yet -- understand german). And his answer: "Someone jumped in front of the train".

Minutes later, more messages in the sound system. I asked again: "What happened now? One more?" And he: "No, they are just telling that they took of the corpse and the traffic is back to normal."

And one more normal working day begins...

It doesn't sound weird???

The brazilian voting system is already internationally known for being 100% eletronic and insecure, for sure. Since the elections in 1996 they start to implement a system, completly proprietary, to do electronic voting in which we dont't have, for instance, the right of recounting the votes, because there's no printed version of our votes. It' s completly automated! Besides, You cannot even know if you really had participated in an anonymous voting because they type your elector number just before go to the machine and type your vote. It' s really easy to know who votes to who.

The government in Brazil managed to do it in a way that all the people are really proud of being the country where the voting process is 100% eletronic. Wow! Even knowning that people still die hunger in the poorest regions in Brazil....clap clap clap! Milions of reais spent in an eletronic-proprietary-insecure-antidemocratic systems.

Now they are giving us the favor of improving the idea: they are opening a licitation to buy more voting machines and adapt the old ones (around 400 thousand) with a new feature: fingerprint scanner devices. They would collect the initial fingerprints in the next elections, and then in the voting after that, we'd not need to bring our "titulo de eleitor" (elector ID) to get recognized by the super new system.

In a discussion mailing list in Brazil, one guy questioned how it would be if the system for any reason cannot recognize the person by the fingerprint. Another guy gave a suggestion that I think was just fantastic: in case of not being able to recognize someone, they would ask this person to shit in a super shit identifier machine connected to the system! You know, just as a contingency ;)

I cannot avoid on imagine big lines of people going to the government in order to have their figerprints collected and then passing in a toillet to drop the "contingency".

During the 5tas Jornadas Regionales del Software Livre, that took placein Rosario, Argentina, the founding members of FSFLA Free SoftwareFoundation Latin America took the first formal steps to the Foundation'slegal constitution, joining the network of Free Software Foundations.

During its Founding Assembly, the Council of Administration of FSFLAdesigned as President Federico Heinz, as Secretary Alexandre Oliva andBeatriz Busaniche as Treasurer, constituting the Executive Council ofthe new organization. The other members of the Council ofAdministration are Enrique A. Chaparro, Mario M. Bonilla, Fernanda G.Weiden and Juan José Ciarlante.

The official launch of the new organization was attended by thePresident of Free Software Foundation Europe, Georg Greve.

FSFLA is the fourth Free Software Foundation in the network, started in1985 with the Free Software Foundation by Richard M. Stallman, laterjoined by Free Software Foundation Europe and India.

Today is the first day of work on organizing my stuff here in Brazil in order to move to Zurich.

I'm a bit sad about being not close anymore (at least physically) of my friends of FSFLA, but also it's exciting to know that I'll be joining another group. Usually I don't unjoin the groups I enter, so I plan to keep working mainly to FSFLA, but it will be impossible to not participate and get involved on FSFE activities.

I hope to meet you folks around there to get some beers and share experience on how to help to save the world :)

Pamela Jones just published today one article written by me about women in Free Software at Groklaw.

Well, after a long time without post anything here, I'm back. I promisse that it will not take so long until I post here a bit more of my crazy thinks and adventures.

After a weekend with people (the psl's server) in maintance, I'm finishing to put my personal website back online, and few more websites which I maintain.

Loooooong day doing that, now I think I'll go bed (actually I'm seated on my bed right now). Ok, go sleep then.