Free Your Android

Free Software Village Europe at SHA 2017

Tonight, the FSFE team Netherlands will arrive at SHA2017 and set up a village for FSFE. SHA-camp is a non-profit hacker-camp in the the Netherlands, similar to the CCCamps in Germany. During 5 days the FSFE will offer a public space for and by our members, friends and supporters to discuss, meet, hack and organise. Find an overview of our sessions and other specialties in this blog post. Find all details and updates on our dedicated FSFE-village-page. Let’s put the hacking back into politics!

Our curated track:

FSFE assembly on CCCamp15 — FSFE village at CCCamp15

Friday, August 4, 17:20: Public Money Public Code by Polina Malaja @ the Italian embassy
Friday, August 4, 22:15: F-Droid: Pimp your Android(-fork) with the best Free Software apps by Erik Albers @ the Italian embassy
Saturday, August 5, 12:30: Free Software in the Dutch public sector by Nico Rikken @ the Italian embassy
Sunday, August 6, 18:20: Secure communications hardware by Maurice Verheesen @ the Italian embassy
Monday, August 7, 11:10: How to make use of democratic elections for your own purpose by Erik Albers @ Stage 1
Monday, August 7, 12:30: What code are you running? by Nico Rikken @ the Italian embassy

OpenStreetMap editing “to go” – adding locations to OSM with Android

Since I realized how easy it is to contribute anytime spontaneously to OpenStreetMap with your Android device, I wrote a how-to add locations to OpenStreetMap with Android (or an Android custom-ROM) in my OSM-profile. It is fun, easy and free.
This way I hope to inspire other people to take their mobile once in a while and to map the world together. This blog post is a duplicate of my profile information:

Installing Osmand~

Get F-Droid, the Free Software repository app. You can download the .apk directly from the home page and need to install it on your Android. If you encounter installation/permission problems, you most probably need to trust “unknown sources” first. Don’t panic : ) no harm involved.

F-Droid is an “alternative market place”, that only offers Free Software (as in Freedom). Others call it “Open Source”. For various reasons, Free Software is to be considered a good thing : )

Inside F-Droid, search for “Osmand”

and install “Osmand~”.
Don’t get confused by other apps : )

Get an account for OpenStreetMap

The outcome is unpredictable but your contribution is priceless

Tomorrow is Document Freedom Day and this is the time when I am happy to see people around the world engaging on a local level to highlight the importance of Open Standards. All of them in their very own way and all of them together, spreading the word about document freedom. They do it although no one knows about the particular impact or outcome of their specific local activity to the big story. And no one can measure it. However, this impact can be really big. I know, because recently I was lucky to see such an effect. And today I like to share this story for your inspiration and motivation.

Since two months we have a new participant in our local FSFE group.

FSFE’s assembly at Chaos Communication Congress (31C3)

The Chaos Communication Congress has been held for the 31st time (“31C3” in short) in the end of 2014 (December 27 to 30) and FSFE was present for the first time with a so-called assembly. An assembly at the Chaos Communication Congress is much more than a “usual” booth that you might think of from other conferences. It is also a place to join in, to sit down and – in our case – to talk about Free Software. Hence, the FSFE assembly was a booth and a meeting place at the same time – for 4 days, day and night, 24 hours.

Gesucht: Nutzer, denen die Gewährleistung eines gerooteten Gerätes versagt wurde

Die Verbraucherzentrale Bundesverband (VZBV) – ein vom Bundesministerium für Verbraucherschutz geförderter Verein – hat auf ihrem Portal Surfer haben Rechte das Thema Rooting vs Gewährleistung aufgegriffen. Speziell geht es in diesem Beitrag um das sogenannte ‘rooting’ von Android-Smartphones. Darunter versteht man den vollen Zugriff auf das eigene Mobilgerät um Daten und Programme nach Belieben zu installieren – beispielsweise auch alternative Betriebssysteme. Die meisten Hersteller gewähren ihren Nutzern dieses Recht auf eigene Gerätehoheit allerdings nicht. Die Verbraucherzentrale Bundesverband stellt dazu fest:

Rechtsexperten sind sich einig, dass das Rooting zu privaten Zwecken zwar strafrechtlich unbedenklich, allerdings vertragsrechtlich höchst umstritten ist. Denn viele Hersteller akzeptieren in der Praxis keinerlei gesetzliche Gewährleistungsansprüche mehr, wenn das Gerät gerootet wurde. Dabei ist es unerheblich, wann der Schaden eingetreten bzw. worauf er zurück zu führen ist.

My experience with Ubuntu running on a Nexus 7

Last week, together with Torsten @grote Grote, I attended SFScon to give a FreeYourAndroid workshop. Thanks to Patrick @ohnewein Ohnewein and Shaun @shaunschutte Schutte, we had the chance to use two Nexus 7 for every purpose. We decided to install Cyanogenmod on one and Ubuntu on the other.

Installing Ubuntu was my turn and I was looking forward to a “one-click process for installing Ubuntu”. Ubuntu and Canonical might be debatable but I think what they do is a very interesting idea and a first step to spread GNU/Linux operating systems on mobile devices like tablets.

I followed the installation guide from Ubuntus wiki. First surprise was that you need another computer that runs Ubuntu to actually install Ubuntu from there on the Nexus S7. Would be a nice feature, if further developments go for an image that you just need to copy to the tablet and then let run the installation by the tablet itself. For now it would be worth a try and seems like some fun to use a tablet that runs Ubuntu to install Ubuntu on the next tablet. Unfortunately, I hadn’t had the chance to try this out.

Free Society Conference and Nordic summit 2012

Last weekend I was attending FSCONS, where I was giving a FreeYourAndroid-workshop as well as my first talk about FSFE’s FreeYourAndroid campaign. I have never been to FSCONS before and I was quite surprised by its familiar atmosphere. Some special fun came up with the Karaoke event at Saturday night, where in the end nearly the whole FSFE team was amusing itself as well as the rest of the conference.

FSCONS is co-organised by the FSFE, hence it was a great opportunity to meet Fellows from all Northern Europe at this conference. Beside other talks, I enjoyed a lot the talks given by Karsten @karsten Gerloff and Otto @otto Kekäläinen. The first one impressed by giving an easy to follow and free talk with just using a few slides. The latter one came up with very good insights on how big companies try to convince decision makers – and how you succeed best in counterarguing. Just the same day, Otto Kekäläinen also received the Nordic Free Software Award 2012 for his important contributions to Software Freedom.

Software Freedom Kosova 2012

Fortunately, I was invited to give a talk @ Software Freedom Kosova 2012 (#SFK12) about why Free Software needs a lobby. SFK12 was organised by Free Libre Open Source Software Kosova (#FLOSSK) and the whole conference was an amazing experience. Late at night, Ariana and Behar picked me up at the airport, and I was promptly invited to come to the FLOSSK-office to meet the whole team. The mood there was very familiar and friendly and the team was supporting the speakers all the time. Thank you all for your great work! Special thanks to Mike @h4ck3rm1k3 Dupont for keeping calm the whole time while being head of this enjoyable but crazy family.