Group: LibrePlanet Ontario

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About Us

The group has been formed to promote the use of Free Software in the communities of Ontario and to support individuals who wish to use or create Free Software. The goals are similar to those of the Free Software Foundation.

Join us

To become a member of the LibrePlanet Ontario Chapter, please

Contact

You may reach the team via IRC (see above) or by emailing the discussion list:

  • LibrePlanet-CA-ON@libreplanet.org

You may also contact the team leaders via email:

  • LibrePlanet-CA-ON-owner@libreplanet.org

Meetings

We plan to meet at 9:00pm Eastern Time on the 24th of every month, so that the meeting falls on a different weekday from month to month. Sometimes we meet in person at various locations, but usually we meet in a voice chat using Mumble on the Group:LibrePlanet_Brasil server. Thanks for hosting, Brasil!

Podcasts

Meetings on Mumble are recorded and are available as podcasts. Add the podcast feed to your podcatcher.

Next Meeting

Monday, 24 April 2017, 9:00pm EDT

Location: Mumble

Agenda

If there's something else you want to discuss, add it to the this agenda!

Upcoming Events


Minutes

Participants: Greg Knittl, Bob Jonkman, and Logan Streondj (greenmonk) and Daniel Villarreal in the text channel.
Audio Recording: http://podcasts.libreplanet.ca/libreplanetontario-2017-04-24.ogg (Size: 37.74 MBytes - Duration: 40m57s)
  • FreeLibre Canadian Tax Preparation Software Project
    • Discussion on LibrePlanet mailing list
    • Forms vs. Spreadsheet vs. Accounting software
    • Problems in other countries
    • Maintenance of tax applications is critical
    • There is no "tax form processing software" for the whole world
  • Group:LibrePlanet_Ontario/Street Team Outreach
    • Have outreach on Digital Freedom Foundation dates, eg. Document Freedom Day?
    • Open Data Day, or the Open Data Book Club
    • Open Data format for tax data? Government promises to have Open Data
  • KWVoIP and ERK (Egg Roll King Restaurant)
  • Integrating XMPP and SMS with JMP.chat
    • OssGuy (Denver Gingrich) and Singpolyma (Stepen Paul Weber)
    • WLSG (Waterloo Libre Software Group and WSIC (Waterloo Students for the Information Commons), student groups at University of Waterloo for Free Software and Free Culture curriculum materials
  • HPR (Hacker Public Radio) episode on Tax Software?
  • We discuss human language parsing programs
  • What GNU+Linux distributions are people using?
    • Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora, System Rescue CD
  • General Intelligence Programming Challenge
    • Using AI for tax software?
    • Licensing terms by CRA limit our ability to create Free Software tax software
    • Discussion on SPAL/SPEL (PDF, 160 kBytes)
  • Other words for Free Software: Libre, Freeware, FAIF software
  • Other programming languages

Text Channel 

 
[8:12 PM] Welcome to Mumble.
[8:12 PM] Connecting to server libreplanetbr.org.
[8:12 PM] Connected.
[8:12 PM] Welcome message:
Welcome to this server running Murmur.
Enjoy your stay!
[8:56 PM] gknittl@sympatico.ca connected.
[8:59 PM] Recording started
[9:02 PM] BobJonkman: The agenda: https://libreplanet.org/wiki/Group:LibrePlanet_Ontario#Next_Meeting
[9:05 PM] DanielVillarreal connected.
[9:05 PM] greenmonk connected.
[9:06 PM] BobJonkman: https://lists.libreplanet.org/archive/html/libreplanet-discuss/2017-03/msg00066.html
[9:10 PM] DanielVillarreal: Hi all!
[9:10 PM] DanielVillarreal: I can hear ...
[9:11 PM] DanielVillarreal: :-)
[9:14 PM] DanielVillarreal: Like using awk ?
[9:19 PM] greenmonk: well, I'm working on Pyash, a programming language based on human grammar.
[9:21 PM] DanielVillarreal: yes.
[9:22 PM] DanielVillarreal: Hoping to make it out to ERK someday.
[9:23 PM] DanielVillarreal: ditto that
[9:26 PM] DanielVillarreal: Thanks!
[9:30 PM] greenmonk: hey, just wanted to mention in relation to the language for tax/government software. the human grammar programming language I'm working on
[9:31 PM] greenmonk: oops, sorry g2g, I'll probably have to do the mailing list thing
[9:32 PM] greenmonk: okay, back baby is restless
[9:32 PM] greenmonk: the youngest is 6 months, older one will be 4 soon
[9:33 PM] greenmonk: yep, today I woke up really early, like 5:30 to do some programming before my son woke up around 7
[9:34 PM] greenmonk: so the programming language is generic, but it could be used for taxes and such because it has a vocabulary of around 8,000 words which are easily translated into 30+ human langauges
[9:34 PM] DanielVillarreal: I like to discuss human languages.
[9:35 PM] greenmonk: well, I have basic C being output right now, still have to add a few more cosntructs to support ANSI C.
[9:35 PM] DanielVillarreal: I've been polishing up my scripts for using exiftool, using perl
[9:36 PM] DanielVillarreal: lol
[9:36 PM] greenmonk: it compiles to OpenCL C as well.
[9:36 PM] greenmonk: hmm, I might be able to get the microphone working hold on
[9:37 PM] DanielVillarreal: Trying to get my son to using Linux. I need to set up a system for my little girl. She's almost four. She just got some cowgirl boots.
[9:38 PM] greenmonk: @daniel I found pocketchip, is a full linux system but portable like a game console
[9:38 PM] DanielVillarreal: thanks
[9:39 PM] DanielVillarreal: Fedora
[9:39 PM] greenmonk: I'm downloading ubuntu 17.04 right now
[9:40 PM] greenmonk: I'm hoping on using my programming language to participate in the General Intelligence programming challenge. Don't know if anyone else here is interested in AI.
[9:41 PM] DanielVillarreal: I'm a big fan of SystemRescueCD for my toolkit. Had issues w/ latest version of Tinycore.
[9:42 PM] DanielVillarreal: I'm interested in AI... I'm looking to the future applications.
[9:42 PM] greenmonk: http://general-ai-challenge.org/
[9:42 PM] DanielVillarreal: Thanks
[9:43 PM] greenmonk: it is by a millionaire game developer from Prague, Chezh republic, rewards for first round is 12 thousand dollars or thereabouts
[9:43 PM] greenmonk: 50 thousand total, the winner gets 12
[9:44 PM] greenmonk: american dollars i beive
[9:44 PM] greenmonk: believe*
[9:44 PM] greenmonk: Well tax accountants are one of those jobs that has the highest likelyhood of being automated.
[9:45 PM] greenmonk: there is already a lot of tax software, much of it free that can help file your taxes for you.
[9:46 PM] greenmonk: one of the issues to be overcome with open source linux tax software is cost of certification.
[9:48 PM] greenmonk: yeah, I use libre for libre
[9:49 PM] greenmonk: in my programming langauge, there actually isn't words for "free" and "libre", but there is liberty and freeware
[9:50 PM] greenmonk: I can't add words, it was scripted, by translating a set of 39,000 english words into 30+ of the most popular human langauges. Then I had it take out overly ambigious words as well as homonyms.
[9:50 PM] greenmonk: at that point was left with 8,000 words
[9:51 PM] DanielVillarreal: Is Klingon one of the most popular languages ? ;-)
[9:52 PM] greenmonk: https://gitlab.com/liberit/pyac is the current version, earlier one can be downloaded at sourceforge
[9:53 PM] greenmonk: https://sourceforge.net/projects/spel/
[9:54 PM] greenmonk: Klingon is specifically designed to be difficult for humans, using the least common word order and consonant clusters
[9:55 PM] greenmonk: here is a PDF about spal https://gitlab.com/liberit/pyac/blob/master/documentation/spal.pdf
[9:56 PM] greenmonk: Pyash (SPAL/SPEL) is specifically designed to be easy for humans and computers..
[9:57 PM] greenmonk: it uses the most common word orders and letters, and consonant clusters, also is easily parseable even without spaces (for streams of speech).
[9:57 PM] greenmonk: also it is easy to translate between different langauges, so people don't have to learn the Pyash vocabulary, but can simply use their native vocabulary in a more regularized manner.
[9:58 PM] greenmonk: that sounds great, hopefully can get the microphone working by then
[9:58 PM] DanielVillarreal: well, this could be a very interesting discussion in a local pub...
[9:59 PM] greenmonk: I don't drink (Buddhist), but other public places good
[9:59 PM] DanielVillarreal: We could have kombucha tea
[10:00 PM] DanielVillarreal: Thanks!
[10:00 PM] greenmonk: good talk thanks :-)
[10:00 PM] greenmonk: good night
[10:00 PM] DanielVillarreal: Good night
[10:00 PM] Recording stopped

Previous Meetings

Meeting Resources

Projects

Active Projects

http://www.cra-arc.gc.ca/esrvc-srvce/tx/ndvdls/netfile-impotnet/crtfdsftwr/menu-eng.html

    • Suggest that the tax specification files and the protocol for sending tax files become another open data set: http://open.canada.ca/en/suggested-datasets
    • Need to create a dummy/test .tax file for developers to use

Discontinued Projects

  • LibrePlanet ON Canada server, to show off federation and build a common resource for others (server is IPv4 + IPv6, need to suitable domain name):
    • GNU Social: need to install web server + database
    • Jabber/XMPP server: Prosody: need let's encrypt cert for encryption, update config to enable encryption, right now accounts can only be added manually
    • Let's Encrypt for HTTPS: need to create certificate
    • Murmer, a Mumble server
    • OwnCloud: installed, definitely needs HTTPS :'(
    • We need some money to put into the Gandi account for a domain name and for the server itself. $15.30 USD buys us about a month of server time. More money, more CPU, RAM, bandwidth we can afford!
    • Discontinued due to lack of interest and effectiveness; a central resource is not as effective as giving workshops and training sessions to others on how to build their own resource
  • Software Freedom Day 2015

Strategy

This is a draft strategy -- feel free to edit!

We have three main areas of focus:

  1. Education/Activism/Advocacy
  2. Community
  3. Services/Support

In all that we do, we need to consider how we are unique from:

  • National/Global groups (e.g. FSF, CLUECAN, etc.) -- our focus is more local
  • Other local groups (e.g. GTALUG, local language/project groups, etc.) -- our focus is on software freedom

Education/Activism/Advocacy

Education can be...

  1. Community-focused, inward-facing -- educating ourselves and our community;
    1. There are many people open to the message of software freedom (e.g. developers, people who are already familiar with the open source movement but maybe haven't yet heard about the free software movement, etc.) who need to hear it.
    2. There is much to learn about software freedom for those people already familiar with the movement (e.g. licensing, making a living, privacy/encryption, finding hardware that respects your freedom, etc.)
  2. Public-facing, more outward-facing activism -- educating the public, educating institutions (universities, governments), etc.

Ideas

  • Street team!
  • Presentations at other meetups/ally groups:
    • Licensing and practical implications of it on work or hobby projects
    • Why GPL or AGPL for your next project at work
    • How we used GPL/AGPL on some code and things went well
    • Why licensing matters for software
    • Why free documentation matters
    • Why free software needs free tools
  • Resources (links) on our website
    • easy to access for new members
    • good starting point to important essays, useful software, practical tutorials, licensing tools, etc.
  • Activism around big proprietary software launches, e.g. presenting the case for software freedom at an Apple/Samsung launch
  • Privacy / Surveillance issues
  • Open Data, e.g. City of Toronto, Province of Ontario?
  • Op. Ed. pieces / letters to the editor to newspapers on current affairs related to software freedom

Community

  • Monthly meeting / social
  • Mailing list
  • Visit ally group meetups to have a presence and find like-minded people who might be interested in joining LibrePlanet
  • Booth at conferences, e.g. FSOSS, DrupalCamp, PyCon Canada, etc.
  • Hackathons using open data and free software serivce APIs/protocols
    • Partner with ally groups (e.g. local OpenStreetMap or open data groups) and organize hackathons
    • Mentorship from those with more experience in a project to newcomers
  • Local teams (e.g. Toronto Team, Kitchener/Waterloo team, Ottawa team, etc.)
  • Enable and equip campus groups (e.g. University of Toronto, University of Waterloo)
    • If we can enable them with our own materials (mailing list, website, services, resources, etc.), they can focus on getting local club status, having a local presence on campus, and campus-specific issues
    • Free software tools for university life (e.g. LibreOffice, buying hardware that respects your freedom for residence, etc.)
    • GNU/Linux tutors/mentors, e.g. for computer science students
    • Google Summer of Code / Libre Code mentorship/support
    • Advocacy within the university
      • Use of freedom-friendly open standards in courses (e.g. being able to submit assignments in open formats)
      • Resisting proprietary software requirements in courses

Services/Support

Server with hosted free software services for members:

  • Jabber accounts
  • Email
  • pump.io / GNU Social
  • Mirror of free-software-only Linux distros like Trisquel or gNewSense
  • ownCloud? (would require a lot of storage space, but could provide support for calendars, file sharing, etc., could use storage quotas, encryption is also possible)
  • tt-rss: RSS reader?
  • basic git hosting (with Gitorious or Gitlab or straight SSH)?
  • web hosting?

The idea would not be to devote a ton of time and resources to become a hosting provider, but to offer libre network services to members which might not otherwise be accessible to non-sysadmins.

Roadmap

Phase 0: Bootstrapping / Build a Working Prototype

  1. Begin regular monthly meetings
  2. Sketch strategy for the group moving forward
  3. Build up some basic materials (website, mailing list, business cards or postcards, etc.) to use for recruitment

Phase 1: Recruitment

  • After Phase 0, we could use the recruitment materials and strategy/plans for the group to build up the membership
    • by visiting ally group events looking for like-minded people
    • by reaching out to University of Toronto contacts for a campus group
    • by preparing to have a presence at conferences with like-minded people

Phase 2: Expansion / Implementation of Other Features

  • After phase 1, depending on numbers, strengths, and interest of the membership, we could start pulling other activities off the strategy "wishlist" and begin to implement them.
  • Different members would ideally take the lead of difference projects, e.g. Blaise could take a lead on campus groups, etc.

Phase 3: Other Regional Teams

  • If we can get this working with the Toronto team/chapter, and we can find people interested in other regions (e.g. KW, Ottawa), we can equip them to implement similar ideas in their cities
  • This could happen sooner or later, depending on when we can recruit members from these regions to lead local teams/chapters


Other Resources

Local Organizations

Conferences

Information Sites/Global Organizations

"issue" is not in the list (interest, location, project, school) of allowed values for the "Organized around" property.

This page was a featured resource in April 2016.


LibrePlanet Ontario
Note Ontario group for free software activists
Region North America
Area Canada
Mailing list http://lists.libreplanet.org/mailman/listinfo/libreplanet-ca-on
Available language(s) English
Contact Sergio Durigan Junior
Members Rudolf O.
Sergio Durigan Junior
Blaise Alleyne
Bob Jonkman
Greg Knittl
Stewart C. Russell
Greg Wright
Daniel Villarreal
Stephen Paul Weber
Reid Ellis
Current status Active
Retrieved from "https://libreplanet.org/wiki?title=Group:LibrePlanet_Ontario&oldid=41867"