nicu's FOSS'n'stuff

Drawing water drops with Inkscape

noreply@blogger.com (Nicu Buculei) — Wed, 19 Jun 2013 14:54:00 +0000

I am taking a graphic design course and one of the assignements received was to remake the logo of a well known soft drink (for the purpose of this tutorial I replaced that logo with something else, as this is not the place for unpaid advertising, especially for products I don't use nor endorse). Is a trivial task with Inkscape, so I decided to enrich it with some water drops, as at the final exam I can show my skills and get a higher grade. For the exam I can't provide a SVG, will have to import/convert it in a proprietary format (such is life...), but Inkscape is my tool of choice so I m sharing the process here.

Initially, the lazy me wanted the short way, learn how others are doing it and there is an Inkscape rain drops tutorial already made by heathenx (thanks buddy, you rock!) which I used to a pretty result. Still, I didn't love it, just liked it.

Then I played with more variations, trying to make it more realistic, but liked the result even less, probably due to the softer edges. I went back to the heathenx way, not perfect, but good enough for a mere exam (without false modesty, for which I am already overqualified).

It was all well until yesterday evening when waiting for the subway I looked at a soft drinks poster, it had a photo with water drops added on top. Looking close, I saw the drops are clearly vector drawings (put on a photo) so I understood what I have to do: simplify, simplify, simplify. Now my homework looks like this:

How To

The first step is to draw, using Beziers, a random rounded blob.

If yor hand is not trained enough for this, draw it with straight lines, we will round it later.

Select all nodes and make it smooth with the toolbar button, you have a rounded blob now.

Backtracks

noreply@blogger.com (Nicu Buculei) — Fri, 14 Jun 2013 11:19:00 +0000

Months ago when I heard rumors about Microsoft preparing Windows Blue based on the large public disappointment with Metro in Windows 8 I thought about writing some words on a perceived advantage of proprietary software over Free software: since users are customers, it is forced to listen to their feedback and if a development goes wrong, they will reverse it (Microsoft is no stranger to that, the most prominent example being Vista/W7), while traditionally Free software developers do it primarily for themselves ("scratch your itch") and won't care much if bleeding users, as one can see with the GNOME project.

In the meantime Windows Blue is nearing release, has changed name to Windows 8.1, will be free of charge (something unusual for Microsoft, revealing the concerns over user unhappiness) and also a half-hearted move, we learn from the preview, since Microsoft has an agenda (app store, user locking, mobiles) and still plenty of money in reserve. Also, GNOME 3.8 was released including an optional "classic" mode, ridiculed by GNOME developers as a "Flinstone" mode.

It was a good thing I didn't write anything at the time, since I was mistaken, the important attribute on Microsoft software wasn't being proprietary, but being commercial. You can see this when learning based on user/customer feedback RHEL 7 will switch the default desktop from GNOME Shell to GNOME Classic. While still kind of a "Windows Blue" move, with a lot of words intended to control the damage, it gives years-worth air bubble to RHEL and CentOS users. As for GNOME, there is an eternity until a RHEL 8 will put the question on the table again, a lot will happen until then.

Just for fun: Apple also just announced a big interface change with IOS 7, is going to be interesting to see the evolution, especially now when their reality distortion field is weaker than ever.

PS: the troll inside me can't skip this question - if there will be a Fedora spin with GNOME Classic mode as a default, will it be called Fedora Blue?

Photoshop versus GIMP: the Empire Strikes Back

noreply@blogger.com (Nicu Buculei) — Wed, 12 Jun 2013 23:26:00 +0000

My Photoshop course continues and in the classes where my homework was targeting the computer display my plan worked flawlessly: I used GIMP to do all the work and when done just saved as .PSD, I enjoyed the experience a lot. Now this strategy hit a roadblock: I have to create some stuff for print, as CMYK files in .PSD format. Total failure.

To be honest, I pretty much expected that, I know GIMP misses those features, I know they are listed in a dusted TO DO somewhere and I know at some point they may get implemented. To be totally honest, if I have to do such graphic things like book covers or posters, GIMP is not my first choice, I would prefer to use Inkscape, since I like better its workflow and thing vector graphics are better suited for the task, but it has the same CMYK problem, and I know the more appropriate job for the task is Scribus, it will create print-ready files.

But that is out of the scope, when I do my own stuff, I choose my own tools. For now I had a clearly defined homework: create a design as CMYK .PSD file. A good opportunity what work and what does not in GIMP.

Error! Error

While GIMP normally can open .PSD files (maybe losing an unsupported feature in the process and rendering it with some potential flaws), when it encounters a CMYK file will just throw out an error and won't load anything. So you can work only one way: .XCF -> .PSD.

Conversions

Of course, Photoshop can convert a file from RGB to CMYK, so you can still do you work with GIMP, save the final version as a .PSD file and then import it to Photoshop and convert to CMYK, the problem is not all the colors in RGB are printable, some are out of gamut, so a RGB to CMYK will change the colors in your image, you may find yourself forced to redo a good part of the work.
And if you insist in editing a CMYK .PSD with GIMP, of course you can use Photoshop to convert CMYK to RGB, open with GIMP, edit, save as RGB .PSD, open in Photoshop and convert again in CMYK. Again, some color loss is possible.

Color pickers

Since GIMP can't work with CMYK colors, probably nobody thought about this feature, which would be useful for conversion and losing colors: in the Photoshop when a picked color is out of gamut and won't print accurately, the dialog will warn you and offer to replace it with the closest printable color. That would be nice to have in GIMP, you would still have to convert color spaces, but at least without losing colors.

On the bright side, the GIMP color picker has some usability features: a list with the recent used colors, the ability to sample a color from anywhere on the screen and multiple modes (I prefer the color circle).

Measurements

Besides CMYK, there is another important part when working for print: instead of pixels, all your measurements will be in millimeters (or inches, if you are from USA).

Except the CMYK mode and color profiles, the New File dialog has everything you need, including measurement units (which later will reflect in the rulers) and high PPI. GIMP makes it easier to access standard image sizes like A4, while in Photoshop you have to go in submenus. Looks like a good start. I almost couldn't believe when I discovered I can't set guides in millimeters for a printable, 300 PPI, image, only pixels and percents are possible. Of course, I can do the math and discover a 5 mm bleed is to be positioned at 59 pixels for a 300 PPI image, but I shouldn't.

Still, no way to produce print-ready files with GIMP?

Let me clarify: if you want to print a color image to your home or office printer and you can create only RGB files, there is no problem, it will be just fine, maybe no 100% accurate in colors, but close enough. You need CMYK only for professional, industrial printing (and maybe not even then, I sent photos in RGB JPEGs and they came out really well for some photo exhibitions). But if you need CMYK, there is a way.

Separate+ is a plug-in for GIMP (if you are a Fedora user like me, you'll have to compile it yourself, is not available in the repos) which will allow for CMYK color separation. It won't work as seamless as Photoshop and may unpredictably change the colors in your document, but at least is something. The workflow is like this: do you work normall and when done save the file (keep a copy, the next step is destructive), then flatten all layers and separate, it will result in 4 layers, for Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black. Then you can export as a print-ready .PSD of TIFF. IF you know what you do, is possible to edit the color separated image. Unfortunately, that's no help for my homework, I had to sell a bit from my soul to get it done :).

Sky wallpapers

noreply@blogger.com (Nicu Buculei) — Mon, 10 Jun 2013 21:38:00 +0000

For the last week the sky here was dramatic, with spectacular light and clouds, so I took a lot of photos and then made few of them in desktop wallpapers to be used freely. Enjoy!

The last image is kind of a bonus, a bit different from the others, but still on the "sky" theme:

Photoshop versus GIMP

noreply@blogger.com (Nicu Buculei) — Sat, 08 Jun 2013 16:17:00 +0000

The title may make you think so, but this is not one of those ridiculous articles where the author claims GIMP is better than Photoshop even on technical grounds. No, let me make it straight from the intro: from a technical point of view there are areas where Photoshop is much better than GIMP (speed, color depth, CMYK, etc.), there are areas where the two are comparable, as there are areas where they are on par and areas where GIMP does better. And of course from a licensing point of view, GIMP being Free software, released under GPL is vastly superior (and thus my only recommendation) and also from the two it is the only running on my Linux machine.

There is also the urban myth of GIMP being an usability nightmare: it is provable false and originating from the "is not a 1:1 copy of Photoshop, so it sucks" (along with memories of pre-2.x versions, which had an ugly interface). I will try to bust this myth.

Time for a disclaimer of my bias: for over 10 years I used exclusively GIMP, I wrote about it and held workshops and presentation, while my Photoshop experience was limited, having played with it long ago, before even the "CS" line was introduced. Still, for various reasons (I may write about this at a later time) I am taking a Photoshop course and find the experience painful: even if I can find my way there, some operations are more cumbersome and less intuitive.

Below I will look at few basic tools in both apps, the tools which one expect to be taught in the very first classes when learning one of those apps. I will highlight the areas where GIMP does better. For the comparison, I ran Photoshop CS5.1 and GIMP 2.8.4 on a Windows 7 machine (my platform of choice is Linux with a classic MATE desktop, but running a recent Photoshop under Wine is neither trivial, nor trouble free).

Overview

It may be trivial, but for me having the image size in the GIMP window title is useful, while the zoom level for Photoshop is not (as while editing you change that a lot) and redundant (is present in the status bar too). You have to go deep in the menus and dialogs to learn the image size in Photoshop. Image size is important info, is a parameter you optimize for.

Cursors

Bad usability is when the user have to look at a widget and think about how to use it, instead of just using it intuitively. This is the case with mouse cursors in Photoshop. Case in point: this polygonal lasso, where I always have troubles finding the active spot (no, is not top-left, as it is usually for mouse cursors).

Rectangular selections

Near the top of the tools panel, there is the rectangular selection tool, which for Photoshop is very simple, with only two options: feather edges and style, which allows to specify a size or aspect ratio. GIMP provides a lot of additional useful features: compositional guides, area highlighting, precise positioning and size and even rounding corners. You can round the corners too with Photoshop, but only after the selection in a completely unintuitive menu option called "Smooth" (that's one of the functions I had to use Google instead of the UI to discover). Everything, except the rounded corners, will apply to the elliptical selections.

Lasso tool

Next is the lasso tool, here the GIMP tool replaces both lasso and polygonal lasso from Photoshop. Lasso is simple, polygonal is more complex, more useful and often used. In Photoshop the tools is also simple: you click to define selection segments, if one segment was misplaced, you press Backspace and erase all segments until you get past it and then click new segments again. In GIMP is more useful: while you can Backspace and delete segments, you can also adjust previously put nodes, so deletion is not needed. Similarly, in GIMP's scissors selection tool, you can adjust previously added nodes, unlike Photoshp's magnetic lasso.

Crop tool

As a photographer, cropping images is my bread and butter and honestly, Photoshop's crop is subpar, the tool can't make a crop preserving the image aspect-ratio, you have to use a cumbersome way (select the entire image, resize the selection while preserving the aspect ratio and then cut to selection), while in GIMP you just check a box. At least Photoshop here can have guides here (not illustrated, since the Photoshop toolbar changes its layout while using the tool), like rule of thirds, very useful when re-framing a photo (GIMP has it, along with other features, like precise size and positioning), but don't get me started with cropping by size in Photoshop, it can destroy your picture by resizing it.

Resize canvas

If so far I talked about tools in the Photoshop panel in their appearance order, the last item is apparently random, but it was the latest that annoyed me (the latest I encountered): resizing the canvas. A thumb up to Photoshop for having input boxes for relative size increase (you can use math operations in GIMP's size spin boxes, that's amazing for a power user, but less intuitive for a first use), but it's alignment tool is limiting, for some operations (when you want to add space to more than two sides) isn't possible to get the job done in a single step. Instead GIMP is WYSIWYG and also allows for precise positioning.

I can go on and on with things like the color curves/levels dialogs (in GIMP they will save and remember past used values, so you can apply the same settings to more than one image) or recently used filters (Photoshop can repeat the last applied filter, in addition to that GIMP will re-show the last used bunch of filters) - the more I use Photoshop, the more I find annoyances, but I hope I made my point: different isn't necessarily worse and more popular isn't necessarily better in every aspect.

Some Azure ads, please?

noreply@blogger.com (Nicu Buculei) — Thu, 30 May 2013 13:49:00 +0000

I found this email too funny not to share, it was sent using the contact form of the Romanian Fedora community website and is genuine, from a real advertising agency (who does work for Microsoft), by a real person (with whom I share some common "friends" on social networks). Translated in English, it says:

Publicity offer request

Good day,

My name is [redacted] and I represent the digital media agency having Microsoft as a client. We wish to have a banner ad for Microsoft on your site, running for a month, 15 June - 15 July.

Please tell if this is possible, which banner format do you have available and what is the cost.
It would be appreciated if you can help with those details today, as soon as possible.

Thank you and waiting for your feedback"

When I stopped laughing, I decided to investigate further and learn if is a naive person, lacking basic clues about technology, FOSS and even her client or a sneaky maneuver from Microsoft trying to corrupt communities. I replied, expressing my genuine curiosity to learn why the website of a Free Software community and Linux distro would be a good place for Microsoft advertising and the answer was "we are promoting a new product, Microsoft Azure, which is intended for programmers and your website is in our target audience" (again, translation mine). I had to lecture again about how Fedora is in both ideological and technical competition with Microsoft and how we can promote only products released under a Free license (preferably GPL) and also free from patents.

Now my curiosity is, starting 15 June, how many FOSS communities (if any), in the country and outside it, will run an Azure banner ad.

Update: it looks like our Ubuntu friends have their share of fun too.

L.O.A.D.

noreply@blogger.com (Nicu Buculei) — Wed, 29 May 2013 14:04:00 +0000

It seems like the LOAD (standing for Linux Open Alternative Day[s]) event is becoming smaller each year, my guess is that may be related to the perceived focus change from Linux as an alternative to the establishment to alternatives to Linux (Microsoft products, antivirus solutions for Windows and such). Anyway, what I wanted to say about it was I may understand to some degree Microsoft being there with presentations and as a sponsor (actually I don't, but this talk is for another day), I may understand almost all talks being about cloud (when the clouds run Linux), I may understand the antivirus presence (when they have Linux server products), I may even understand the opening saying "we move to the cloud, where is not important what runs on the servers, open or proprietary" (no, I don't), but FFS, I can't understand why, at such a Linux event, the laptop for presentations runs Windows 7. Actually there was a reason for the Windows laptop: one of the Microsoft guys needed it for Hyper-V and Azure demos... To be honest, at one of the presentation the laptop was changed punctually with... a Mac running OS X. It was needed for a Samba 4 demo with Windows clients running on virtual machines (and I am not sure, maybe a Linux server in another VM).

A few points which drew my attention:

Microsoft is preparing to offer paid support for Linux distros running on their Azure service (most likely CentOS, openSUSE and Ubuntu);
Avast is a very popular antivirus for Windows, their Linux version is 3 years old, but they are working on a new Linux version. The version after that may have also a management console. Anyway, the "Linux" word was said only after questions from the audience;
Demotix is a citizen journalism platform and photo agency, it is owned by Corbis, which in turn is owned privately by Bill Gates (his only owned business right now). It runs on Drupal, MariaDB and Linux.

Golden wallpaper

noreply@blogger.com (Nicu Buculei) — Sat, 11 May 2013 20:47:00 +0000

I apologize for doing it again so soon, I couldn't keep myself from making this photo in a desktop wallpaper (actually, if the access was not forbidden on that small island, I would probably took dozens of pics in that magic light).

Fields wallpapers

noreply@blogger.com (Nicu Buculei) — Mon, 06 May 2013 19:52:00 +0000

Is only a couple of weeks since I posted some wallpaper-ready photos, but the spring around is very generous with images, so while I keep myself busy with content on the photography blog, some images are very tempting as desktop wallpapers. Here are some:

On winning the internets

noreply@blogger.com (Nicu Buculei) — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 20:54:00 +0000

The easiest way to win the internets is to post some cute picture with kittens, but I have no recent pictures with kittens. Then what's the next best thing? Pictures with puppies, but I don't have those either. Then the next best thing? Pictures with babies! But... wait! I have one of those:

YouTube.ro

noreply@blogger.com (Nicu Buculei) — Fri, 26 Apr 2013 09:32:00 +0000

With some fanfare (including a personalized logo), yesterday was the launch of YouTube in Romania. Beside some irrelevant content contracts nobody cares about, I am not sure of the purpose of such launch, I am publishing content on YouTube for over 6 years, but just out of curiosity I tried loading the .ro website this morning to be grated with this:

note: this is running an up to date Fedora 18 with an up to date Firefox 20. Fun stuff.

Installing stuff

noreply@blogger.com (Nicu Buculei) — Wed, 24 Apr 2013 20:52:00 +0000

Is heartwarming to see people writing Free software and is understandable newbie developers will create less than perfect applications, still there are some apps which should never be written, and in this category I include the "scripts" supposed to install and do "everything" on your distro, from installing Flash and codecs to... $DEITY knows what.

The other day on g+ I had an exchange with the author of such an app, PostInstallerF, who got mad and labeled me a troll when I told him his creation is bad on usability, does not help newbies learn, bad for security and overall not useful.

It is true I judged the app only from screenshots, this is why I took the time to install and look in-depth at it now, here are my points:

First, I don't think is a wise idea to give your root password to apps installed from random sources (even if here the source is sf.net and the source is available), the target for this app are newbies, they should learn you give your root password only to apps from a verified repo. And rood password is not needed here, Fedora has PolKit.

Moving to the main app window, the usability disaster start to show its head, I don't know where to start: double click, why, it's the desktop? computer shutdown from inside an app? a help button don't giving any help but opening the sf.net project page? a Gnome Shell Extensions item when I don't have any Gnome Shell installed? Still. I will do it trough, option by option.

"Configure/Tuning" is a mix of system settings and installing things (desktops and drivers). I don't understand why installing desktops is a "configure" item instead of an "install" item. And some of the things there, I have them installed already. What happens if I "install" something already installed?

Honestly, I don't dare to try the options in the Gnome Shell Extensions section, I fear it will install Gnome Shell as a dependency. But the app should have figured is not installed and hide this item.

The "Install" section is another strange mix of installable apps, some from the base repo, some from Rpmfusion, some from fedorapeople experimental repos, some from 3-rd party repos, some Free software, some not. There are some unchecked apps which I already have installed (I tried to "install" Inkscape, it told me it did it, but I already had it) - if an app is installed, I expect to see it checked. Beside that, it probably gives pride to the developer to boast "over 100 programs and modifications", but when many of those (Firefox, OpenJDK, GIMP, Hugin, Converseen, Pencil, Glabels, to list only some from my screenshot) are available in the base repo and installable with the available package manager GUI, the effort is futile. Really, if you have to write such a tool, focus on what's hard to install and keep the noise away.

Still, I have not touched the main usability issue: for a new user, a list of 100 items, title and one line generic description, is not going to be useful. The apps are not discoverable, newbies need categories, keywords, long descriptions, search, maybe screenshots.

PS: also, don't call it "everything you need", maybe "my favorite list of apps".

Petals wallpapers

noreply@blogger.com (Nicu Buculei) — Tue, 23 Apr 2013 20:17:00 +0000

On this front the autumn and winter were not very productive so it's been a while since I prepared photo desktop wallpapers, but today I stumbled over some images that may work this way. They are about spring and greens, so they may look best on a desktop/distro with a green flavor, but that's the beauty of freedom, they can be used anywhere.

LGM

noreply@blogger.com (Nicu Buculei) — Wed, 10 Apr 2013 13:58:00 +0000

10-14 April, meaning right now, in Madrid is taking place the Libre Graphics Meeting conference, is the biggest event getting together developers working on and designers using Free and Open Source graphic tools. Is a very good conference with program packed with presentations, workshops and various meetings, making this community feel like a big family.

Unfortunately this year a conjuncture of various live evens keeps me away from the conference and friends there, but I hope to meet them again at the next edition taking place in Europe (it will be a while until then). Have the best of fun and some fruitful time!

Starry night

noreply@blogger.com (Nicu Buculei) — Sat, 30 Mar 2013 16:58:00 +0000

A few weeks ago I gave myself the task to decorate one of the walls inside the home and the first thought was to buy some stickers and put those on the wall. The internet research was disappointing: few options, ugly and very expensive.
Of course my natural reaction was: I do graphics, I can do it myself! But I can't paint the walls myself, I have no experience with painting at such large size for the wall (and my experience with painting is very little, watercolors on paper, back from elementary school), so maybe a better option would be to design the stickers with Inkscape, find a place to print them and use that.
But the time was short and I had no idea where to print large-size wall stickers (plastic), so ultimately I gave-up, bought something offline (in the Chinese market they have some decent ones, low price, pretty enough and from a quality point of view, they will last enough for the price).
Of course my creative self was not happy with the defeat, now I found some free time and designed one of the many ideas I had back then: a set of stars with the moon, all of them with funny faces. I won't use them as stickers, all I can do is to make them available as clipart, if anyone has some need for them.
About the other ideas... we'll see if I get the time and mood to put them down too (less likely, this set was the easiest).

Call for help: WLMRO

noreply@blogger.com (Nicu Buculei) — Thu, 21 Mar 2013 16:50:00 +0000

I am relaying the call for help I wrote (in Romanian) to our local Wiki Loves Monuments contest website: it seems like 2013 is the last year when the historical monuments free photography contest is held at international level (to avoid contributors burnout) and perhaps the last we will organize in Romania either (individual countries may continue on their own in the following years).

So 2011 and 2012 were big successes, now for 2013 the organizing team for Romania is smaller, for the contest to happen we need contributors, otherwise is going to be very low profile. Step forward, we need a few contributors, they need a little experience with Wikipedia (really basic things, easy to learn), some communication skills and a lot of enthusiasm. The activity won't take much time and won't be hard (the infrastructure is up and running, ProLinux is helping again). But it will make you feel good, I promise! You will help Wikipedia and promote national history and culture.

Of course, we could use some help from sponsors, so we are able to offer prizes, but participating volunteers are way more important!

#FREEBASSELDAY

noreply@blogger.com (Nicu Buculei) — Fri, 15 Mar 2013 16:14:00 +0000

When I learned last summer about the #FREEBASSEL initiative, the move to support the liberation of FOSS developer Bassel Khartabil (Safadi), illegally detained in Syria, I was revolted. Even if I didn't knew him in person, we worked together on projects like the Open Clip Art Library. I signed the petition and helped spreading the word. Still, I wouldn't imagine it will take so long.

There are two news about him, one good and another bad. The good news, apparently he is alive, the bad news he is still illegally detained, with no formal charges against him and no trial is sight. So much that his supporters organize the 1st Annual #FREEBASSELDAY today, on 15 March 2013, one year after his arresting in Damascus. Honestly, to see this planned as a yearly action is very discouraging, I know one can argue with non-democratic governments, but I still hope he won't be jailed for one more year.

Wikipedia and the internet-savy monument burglars

noreply@blogger.com (Nicu Buculei) — Mon, 04 Mar 2013 21:06:00 +0000

These days when we should start this year's edition of Wiki Loves Monuments (I had on my TODO to write a call for contributions, since the team is smaller) a scandal appeared: a local cable news channel aired a report about historical monuments plundered by internet-savy burglars (video and story in Romanian).
In August 2011 a historical monument, the wooden church in Urisiu de Jos was plundered. Stolen were icons and other works dating from the XVI century, valuated at over 100.000€ on the black market. In two months the band plundered a total of 8 wooden churches, historical monuments, stealing around 120 icons, valuated at over 1.000.000€.
wooden church in Urișiu de Jos, Mureș, photo by Țetcu Mircea Rareș, CC-BY-SAThe priests in charge of those churches found the scapegoat: they blame the internet. Those monuments were pretty much unknown and undocumented, except on Wikipedia, where the volunteers gathered data and images for public use. The burglars used Wikipedia to learn about the places (check the above-mentioned page, it has a bit of information and a bunch of pictures, normal, if not even low, for a historical monument). It does not matter the churches lacked locks, fences, alarms, surveillance systems (as required by law for a monument), the internet is to blame for making the information public).
Is also worth mentioning the police also used the same Wikipedia articles as the burglars, since there was no other info available for them to use, the churches didn't have even lists with the valuable objects, so police used the photos to identify the stolen icons. Still, they recovered 85 of the 120 stolen icons.
wooden church in Urișiu de Jos, Mureș, photo by Țetcu Mircea Rareș, CC-BY-SAI fear now a chilling effect, which may go two ways: on one hand, priests may be uncooperative with photographers working for Wiki Loves Monuments 2013, or for Wikipedia in general, or with any photographers interested in historical monuments (the large part of historical monuments in Romania are churches). On the other hand, photographers may be scared for getting into trouble (the Wikipedia contributor worked with the police as a witness.)

How to shoot yourself in the foot: a story on Free Software activism

noreply@blogger.com (Nicu Buculei) — Thu, 28 Feb 2013 16:02:00 +0000

I wrote a few words last week when Richard Stallman visited Romania and delivered a talk, then he was invited at the official launch of a local organization, Ceata Foundation (it is actually older, but until now it was an informal group which recently was registered officially), which is crafted very much upon RMS style: Free Software supporters but to the extreme, burning bridges with other local groups (for example harassing fedoraproject.ro contributors).

Time for a disclaimer: I worked for a couple of years with Ceata on various projects and even had some formal position inside, but left in the summer of 2011 entirely for personal reasons, it was NOT due to differences in our views on FOSS or leadership (which were plenty), I could easily handle that part. It was my private life. So yes, I have inside knowledge and could be suspected to hold a grudge, put I promise is not the case.

So, back to the point, Ceata managed a very powerful image move by bringing the most important guest for their core audience. And they scored a second image move: to get RMS to do an interview at a local TV channel, Nasul TV. It is a very small TV channel (I don't have them on cable, only few cable companies carry them) but is still a TV channel. Ceata put a set of requirements, which were accepted. The interview was broadcasted and is almost one hour long.

Do not have any bias, just watch the interview, after a very short introduction in Romanian, it is English with Romanian subtitles. I admit of watching only about 5 minutes, I know well the topic and I am just after attending in person one RMS talk, but for those who didn't, there is a lot of insight.

So far everything was positive, let's move to the "shoot in the foot" part: after the interview, Ceata is unhappy. They have a problem with the video format, they requested the WebM format to be used exclusively, but it was MP4 inside a Flash player. After talks, a link to the WebM version was added. Also there is an issue with Facebook page for the show being mentioned near the end of the interview, Ceata requested that part to be cut to no success. Then they have issues with the translation, things like the Romanian words used to translate "proprietary" or "non-free". And the big issue is with the license, the video recording was released as CC-BY-NC-ND, while the television does not understand the issue with NC (and imagine someone will sell their work for a profit), Ceata has a problem with the ND part: they can't replace the translation and can't censor the Facebook part (note: RMS himself uses CC-BY-ND).

So what a Free Software activism is expected to do? You can see it on their mailing list (in Romanian language): they are unhappy, threaten the TV channel, invite members to comment on the website, talk about a flashmob, boycott, even the "DDOS" word was heard (that mail is still up). Currently the flashmob is under planning, supposed to happen tomorrow morning (details in the linked thread). Focus was lost, it moved from the license to linguistics.

Next time with another such FOSS speaker will be around, expect him to be seen on TV. Or maybe not.

RMS

noreply@blogger.com (Nicu Buculei) — Sat, 23 Feb 2013 11:53:00 +0000

I hear he was here last time in the mid-90ies, but that happened ages ago and very few people know it ever happened, so when Richard Stallman came to Bucharest it was quite an event for the local FOSS community, many traveled long distance to see him talking. For me it was obvious to go there, I never attended one of his talks and it was a perfect opportunity to take some photos. I have to acknowledge my reaction wit the talk was "not impressed", indeed he is a good and experienced speaker, but maybe 2/3 of his speech I could have delivered myself (albeit in a not very good English, I can talk hours about the benefits of Free Software, its history, problems with SaaS) and the rest would not, because I find myself in disagreement with (he has the known "GNU/Everything" antics, he thinks Free Software activists are more important than developers and such). Really, there is nothing new, the biggest part of the audience already knew it any many could talk about it, the discourse is classic (and old, including the ancient Bush joke) with few minor updates (like the Obama mention). You see one, all are the same, to the Saint Ignucius part to the final auction. From a photographer point of view, I have more reasons to be unhappy. Is not that I had to take care not to shoot them while picking his teeth and nose or yawning in front of the full audience, is he not being consistent with himself. RMS asked the audience a few things, for example not to geotag his photos (this one is stupid, since the place of the event is well known) or publish the videos in open formats (I understand that), but the worst is he asked people not to post photos of him on Facebook, because it is a "massive surveillance machine". While I agree in many ways with his views on Facebook, is still stupid and useless: say I post the pictures on Google Plus (he wasn't against that) and under a Free license (because I believe in that), then anyone can take my photos and put them on Facebook, with face tags, geolocation and everything. Forbidding that would make them non-free. Second, when talking about proprietary software, RMS told us about a dilemma: you have two evil options, break the license or not share with your friends, and recommended the lesser evil, sharing. Sharing to Facebook is also the lesser evil, since it won't let your friends down. Third, if people go to a platform like Facebook for news, not offering them the news will leave them uninformed. Is better to have people informed, even if from the wrong channel. Last, from a legal point of view, it was a public person at a public event. That is news, you can't restrict it.

Fedora 18 release party in Bucharest

noreply@blogger.com (Nicu Buculei) — Sat, 16 Feb 2013 19:30:00 +0000

As promised in yesterday's post, is the time to come back with photos from the Fedora 18 release event that happened today in Bucharest. Being here for the OSOM conference, Christos Bacharakis, Fedora Ambassador from Greece, with help from ROSEdu and OSOM, organized this event. Myself, I was pretty much a simple attendant. I have to witness, the participation exceeded my expectation, it peaked at 15 people (including us and the organizers). However, I couldn't abstain myself and asked the audience who is using Fedora: only two hands raised. I think Chris convinced at least a couple more to give it a try. Since we pretty much knew each other from before, the talk was very open and the event interactive. Chris started with a general presentation on Fedora, the project, goals, governance, joining and such. With the hackfest, we weren't that lucky: the Raspberry install refused to cooperate, with nobody in the room having access rights to the Romanian section in Transifex we couldn't do translations, but we talked about those topics, explored wikis and websites. Myself, I tried to keep the audience busy a little with some talk about doing graphics while the Raspberry PI image was downloading (the internet connection was spotty). There was some swag (install DVDs, stickers, pins, buttons) for the audience, but also some extra. So I grabbed the leftovers, a few F18 multi-desktop install DVDs, ready to be given away (also some went to ROSEdu for their students and some to the guys in Cluj). Those who resisted until the end, we went for some food in a nearby mall afterwards (not pictured).

OSOM in images

noreply@blogger.com (Nicu Buculei) — Fri, 15 Feb 2013 20:34:00 +0000

This is a short walkthrough in images of the OSOM conference as I saw it today happening in Bucharest. It pretty much went as expectedBut I still not understand why the Adobe offices were a right place for a FOSS conference, Maybe it was their wonderful proprietary reader running on a proprietary OS used to display many of the sides, or maybe it was the free sodas. Anyway, a solid presence from Mozilla and ROSEdu, but also tracks from Drupal and openSUSE And, of course Chris from Fedora, kind of a rockstar, who made the conference turn from Romanian to English language (no problem, our communities are quite fluent with English) During the presentation he made an important point the invitation to tomorrow's Fedora release event which also happens in Bucharest. Beside the presentations, the most important part was the opportunity to meet again old friends from various local communities. Stay tuned, a similar report will come in the next couple of days from the Fedora event.

F18 release event in Bucharest

noreply@blogger.com (Nicu Buculei) — Wed, 13 Feb 2013 07:39:00 +0000

I told I will come back with more info about a Fedora 18 release event expected to take place in Bucharest, I still have not much to say about it, but I see Chris already have a post with the content and schedule (and his blog is not correctly aggregated on planet) It will take place on Saturday at 12:00 at Facultatea de Automatica si Calculatoare (Politehnica University of Bucharest), room number EC102, see more on Chris' blog. Note: this is going to be the first Fedora release event in Bucharest in the last couple of years (since Fedora defaulted to GNOME Shell and the local team considered is nothing worth celebrating about that).

OSOM

noreply@blogger.com (Nicu Buculei) — Fri, 08 Feb 2013 14:43:00 +0000

Open Source Open Mind or OSOM in short is the name of a yearly event "designed to reveal the general Open Source and Free Software concepts" (quote from its about page now at the fourth edition. It looks like so far it was very small and held at a couple of universities across the country. Honestly, I never heard about it. So when an invitation came to the official address, it got unnoticed.

Later, when one of the organizers contacted me personally, I gave it a second look and didn't like what I saw: the event is hosted at the Adobe Systems offices in Bucharest, by any means far from the ideal place for a FOSS event and as it conflicted with my day job, my reply was not a commitment "I may attend, but can't make a promise now".

In the meantime, they contacted a proper Fedora Ambassador, Chris from Greece. He got in touch with me, I expressed my doubts and reiterated the availability part: can't make a firm promise. And even if I go, I do not intend to keep a talk (sorry, but I can't give with a straight face promotional talks about software I find not functional in its default state). So he pursued the action inside Fedora and is attending the Romanian event with a talk, first time after 2009 when an international Fedora speaker visits the country.

Now I have a lot more free time and I understand quite a few ROSEdu people will be there too, so there is potential for quality time and good side-talks. I will attend (but only in the audience, not as a speaker) and report afterwards.

Being here, Chris wants to organize also a Fedora release event too, most likely held at the Politehnica University of Bucharest, but more info about that at a later time, when the details are set.

Back to blogging

noreply@blogger.com (Nicu Buculei) — Wed, 06 Feb 2013 15:37:00 +0000

After my employer crashed following a story worthy of Hollywood movies (complete with operations signed by 3-letter American agencies) I see myself finally on the jobs market and open to freelancing stuff. Considering the local market for graphic design using FOSS tools or for open community things, freelancing may be a long term option. Or embracing the "dark side" may be a more practical approach. We'll see. The net result is for the foreseeable future I should have more time to take care of the blog and participate to local FOSS events (one of those will take place soon, I will write about it in a few days when there are thing ready to announce).

So when freelancing the first step is to get an office at home ready for work. In my case, getting the household laptop usable: it was used with Windows 7 for trivial tasks: web surfing, multimedia play and very light photo editing. I left from the start some unpartitioned space to put a Linux "later, when will get enough free time" (and an unspoken "when a decent Fedora release comes out" - my desktop at work was still F14). I can't use a Windows system for real work, so a Fedora install was in order.

Since, aside the horrible new Anaconda UI, the experience of installing Fedora 18 Beta on my netbook was smooth enough, I expected the same on the laptop (a "N" series Dell, one of those sold with FreeDOS). But wrong I was. It was the hardest Fedora install ever, I may exaggerate a bit, but it felt worse than Red Hat Linux 4.2 (my first Fedora/RHEL/RHL) install.

The first problem was creating the LiveUSB: the Fedora tool refused to play nice and I didn't feel like going the dd way on Windows, so Unetbootin did the trick again.

I didn't count, but I believe I had to restart the installer over a dozen of times because it crashed in various places (most often when configuring the storage or right after it - and don't imagine I tried complex stuff, just "simple partition" as ext4).

Finally, I managed a workaround for the storage part (create all the partitions as LVM and then change their type to "simple") and had a "lucky" run with no crashes elsewhere and the install finished. Had to disable ACPI so the computer won't lock-up at boot, but that's pretty much a rule when running Linux. Now the computer is up and running with a shiny MATE desktop, configured to look and act pretty much as my old and trusted Fedora 14. I was able to take a first (unpaid) task today.