Annual Reports Finished for Now

2009-02-02 by mjr

So now our annual reports have been submitted. Despite the problems with the tax office mentioned in that article, it all seems to have come together just in time. In general, we’re in pretty good shape at the moment. I saw this in A Cambridge Co-operator: December and January’s Area Committee Meetings and I think it applies to us too:-

“It’s become slightly surreal how, when the rest of the economy seems to be in dire straights, the monthly figures that the area committee receives for each of the locally-accountable businesses seem to be largely unaffected. As worrying as the wider situation is, it appears that it has yet to really impact on our businesses. Let’s hope that the national enconomy improves before it does so…. “

Whether it’s because we’re cooperative or because small free software businesses are in good shape (Webconverger – well done!), I’m not too gloomy. Most of the time.

Thanks to all the members and associates who helped TTLLP in our year ending mid-2008! If you’ve not already had a copy, an annual report should be with you shortly. We’ll start work on the next one in a few months, aiming for publication in autumn 2009.

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I’m Not Boycotting FOSDEM About Novell, So Please Stop Saying That

2009-01-30 by mjr

Last Friday, I wrote “I’m not going to FOSDEM again because there are better value-for-money events around now” right near the start of an article on here. But on Wednesday, I was surprised to learn from another website that I “find it necessary to not only whine, but also boycott a conference, because [I] believe that FOSDEM should not take money from [Novell], just because they also happen to be a company, and as such make business deals with Microsoft.” That’s just plain false. I also found a link from the Boycott Novell website holding it up as an example of the boycott working – huh?

Firstly, my wording wasn’t perfect (by “not going to FOSDEM again”, I meant I didn’t go last year either, not that I’ll never go), but I feel it was pretty clear that I’m not boycotting FOSDEM due to Novell. Both schestowitz (on the boycottnovell site) and Wouter Verhelst (quoted above from his personal website) were naughty to suggest otherwise!

Secondly, Novell didn’t do a deal with Microsoft “just because they happen to be a company”. Lots of companies haven’t done deals with Microsoft. Novell did it to make a net profit from the deal and so I have some admiration for campaigners who aim to make the deal a huge liability for Novell. That’s just influencing corporations as they were designed to work, so don’t blame the campaigners for trying.

So, I feel that both No-Novell-ers and company-blinders should try to find some compromise instead of flaming each other from twenty paces. It looks to me like the No-Novell-er’s request (roughly: tell us how much to donate to get rid of them) was a reasonable suggestion. If the organisers are so open-minded, why not make a counter-offer instead of simple “they still deserve a place” defence?

To close, I repeat: if you’re going to FOSDEM, I hope you have a safe journey and a fun time and why not tell them what you think of the Novell-MS deal. If you’re helping run FOSDEM, thank you!

Posted in Education, Training and Information | Tagged , , , , , , , | 4 Comments

identi.ca and twitter OLPC – One Line Per Contact

2009-01-29 by mjr

I’ve been having fun with identi.ca and twitter recently, but some of my contacts, friends, followees, subscriptions (or whatever you want to call them) send many more messages than others. One contact gave a running commentary on his progress up the floors of a building yesterday. Fine, but a bit of a torrent of data.

If someone posts and leaves it for a while, it’s sometimes an explanation of where they’ve gone, so I’d like to check people’s last tweets. I’ve seen some clients do that and it seems there’s a method in the API to do it. The API returns XML, so I’m using XSL to transform it to xhtml (I’ve still not taken the time to learn the XML CSS ways) with the following commands:-

	wget --no-check-certificate -O - https://username:PASSWORD@identi.ca/api/statuses/friends.xml | \
	sed -e '1a\
<?xslt-param name="site" select="identi.ca"?>\
<?xml-stylesheet title="Site Summaries" type="text/xsl" href="twitters.xsl" ?>
' > identica.xml

And here’s twitters.xsl which converts the downloaded xml to xhtml:-

<?xml version='1.0' ?>
<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0"
 xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"
 xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">
<xsl:param name="site">twitter.com</xsl:param>

<xsl:template match="/" xml:space="preserve">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><head>
<title><xsl:value-of select="$site" /> Friends</title>
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="mirrors.css" />
</head><body>
<dl class="statuses">
<xsl:apply-templates />
</dl>
</body></html>
</xsl:template>

<xsl:template match="/users/user" xml:space="preserve"><dt><a href="http://{$site}/{screen_name}"><img src="{profile_image_url}" /><xsl:value-of select="name" /> (<xsl:value-of select="screen_name" />)</a> - <a class="time" href="http://{$site}/{screen_name}/statuses/{status/id}"><xsl:value-of select="status/created_at" /></a></dt><dd><xsl:value-of select="status/text" /></dd>
</xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>

Have fun! (And what have I done wrong?)

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World Economic Forum 2009 in Davos

2009-01-28 by mjr

The World Economic Forum opens today (28 Jan) and runs until the weekend. This year most of the high-power planning sessions and feel-good corporate social responsibility whitewash has been replaced by sessions such as “What Happened to the Global Economy?” (Er, it broke because you bet more money than existed in the world?) There’s a report from France24 and a programme of sessions.

Like WEF in previous years, selected sessions are broadcast on SFinfo in German and Original Languages (often English) on Hotbird at 13east. Additionally, this year, there are webcasts (maybe the podcast version will play on free software) but it seems that none of the computing sessions are up for broadcast. Economics rules the airwaves for 2009.

My main reason for posting here is to boggle at the WEF myspace competition. Isn’t Myspace about the least appropriate of the big social networks for an economics forum? I suspect some payment or benefits from the network that Rupert Murdoch’s company bought.

There’s also @davos which seems to be talking much more than listening… seems appropriate for WEF, no?

Posted in Cooperatives | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

KohaCon 2009

2009-01-28 by mjr

KohaCon 2009, the conference for the premier free software integrated library system (Koha) will be held in Plano, Texas, USA on 16-17 April 2009. This is a FREE conference. There is no registration fee, but we are requesting that all attendees pre-register.

More details on koha.org, with links to schedules and notes and so on.

It seems unlikely that I’ll get to Texas at that time. Travel bookings have just opened, but I have a higher-priority event in April which hasn’t fixed its date yet. With any luck, there’ll be some “social media” around KohaCon for us poor Euros to watch and maybe even take part.

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Hardware Questions: Asus M5200N, Ubuntu, GPRS and an iPod Touch?

2009-01-26 by mjr

Moving on from the horrible tax situation, I’m struggling to get three pieces of hardware working. I’m terrible with hardware. Can anyone help me get these working better, please?

  1. I’ve been lent an Asus M5200N after I busted my shoulder with a 7kg laptop at #davebcs. I’ve managed to enable processor scaling as ondemand, but like the page says, the fan is noisy. Other sites report that the Centrino’s thermal limit is 100C, so is it OK to set the fan not to kick in until 78C on the sensor? The default is 40C which means it’s permanently on – the coolest the fan makes it is about 74C.
  2. The Asus has Ubuntu on it (intrepid I think). Is there an easier way to get my three GPRS connection working than copying the config files from the old laptop and using the terminal? Network Manager doesn’t seem to work and I can’t see what it’s trying to do or why it’s failing (where’s its debug log?). Alternatively, is there a distribution better suited to occasional laptop use than Ubuntu?
  3. I’ve been lent an iPod Touch. However, when plugging it into the USB on the Asus, the screen says simply “iTunes” and the quick start guide says to connect it to iTunes. Can gtkpod do this, is there another way to start it up from Ubuntu, Debian or GoboLinux, or shall I beg access to a computer running iTunes?

Thanks for any answers. I may send out small gifts in return because questions 2 and 3 seem very awkward to me.

Posted in GNU/Linux | Tagged , , , , , , , | 5 Comments

Annual Report Crunch Time

2009-01-26 by mjr

announcement platform
Time to Report

After a good start, I’ve hit a bump in the road getting all the various TTLLP annual reports filed with the various offices on time.

Well, less a bump in the road, more of a gaping chasm.

Well, less a gaping chasm, more of a black hole with the potential to consume as many resources as you can throw at it.

As usual, it’s the financial reports and rax return which are the problem. After making a good start by closing the 2007-8 books in plenty of time, we’ve had some small problems which we’ve overcome, but the blocking problem now is that HMRC are using an obsolete address for the company.

I only just found out that was the problem yesterday. That’s doubly odd because I changed my address at the same time (which they’re using) and we’ve submitted two tax returns since then with the correct address.

Once I got through to the telephone helpline, they told me to go to the tax office (in the nearest town just now, but scheduled for closure) to change the address. At the tax office, they told me to use a telephone in the corner and I had no need to have gone in person. HMRC’s left hand doesn’t seem to know what its right one is doing!

The guy on the end of the phone confused me with jargon, but the upshot is that it will take up to 3 working days to correct our address, then we can request new access to our accounts which will take up to 7 days… which means we’ll miss the filing deadline. I think it’s time to complain about the broken address. I’ll dent my progress. Anyone else finding the changed tax filing process bloody taxing this year?

Finally, anyone got free and open source software for online filing of partnership tax returns? There’s a £10 shareware Excel spreadsheet tool out there, but I guess I’ll have to borrow someone’s Excel to run it (it won’t work in OpenOffice, will it?). Is there a better way? If not, I’ll tell parliament.uk about HMRC driving Windows sales (slowly chipping away at the monopoly).

Posted in Cooperatives | Tagged , , , , , | 3 Comments

I’m not going to FOSDEM 2009

2009-01-23 by mjr

FOSDEM is a place where “free and open source software” really means “open source software” and “the “F” in FOSDEM is a token gesture to the free software movement” if you believe FOSDEM organiser Philip Paeps. If that’s so, I’m amazed they can claim “to promote the awareness” of free software with a straight face.

I’m not going to FOSDEM again because there are better value-for-money events around now, but I do understand the motives of the various anti-Novell campaigners. The Boycott Novell site linked to my explanation of Boycotts a few years back.

I really don’t agree that “A conference just is not “complete’ without corporate schwag and presence.” Presence? I don’t really enjoy being jumped by salesmen. Schwag? There was one long-term useful item in my last conference pack, that was from an association and I would probably have bought a slightly better one if I hadn’t been given it.

So, I really don’t understsand why FOSDEM are annoying people in part because they like branded cheap junk. I suspect most of it ends up in the bins before long. I mean, who needs a non-obvious bottle-opener? I have one on the waiters’ friend, another with a nice handle, one on my penknife, one on my wife’s penknife and even one on the can opener’s handle. There are probably a few more in my home and bottles aren’t even so hard to open without a special tool anyway!

Anyway, if you’re going, I hope you have a safe journey. Maybe you could mention Glyn Moody’s summary of the FOSDEM controversy to some people there. Call me when you’re organising a trip to something like a drupalcon, wordcamp or LUGRadio Live.

Posted in Education, Training and Information | Tagged , , , , , , | 9 Comments

SPI January 2009

2009-01-21 by mjr

The monthly board meeting of SPI will take place on irc.oftc.net #spi tonight (Wed 21 Jan) at 20:00 UTC. Members may have seen that the meeting announcement is delayed because the secretary has been ill and it seems that none of the other board members has stepped in to take over. I think the only new associated project currently under discussion is waiting for a legal opinion, so your guess about the meeting contents is probably as good as mine.

My guesses: there will probably be a treasurer’s report; Martin Zobel-Helas has been filling in the gaps in the 2007-8 minutes, so there’ll be two or three sets for approval; the secretary may report on website redevelopment progress; Privoxy might have taken up the offer of associated project status from the SPI December 2008 meeting; and there might be a report on Tux4Kids trademarks.

Watch the comments below this article for a link to the summary when posted.

Posted in SPI | Tagged , , , , , | 3 Comments

What’s an Interest Group? An Association? A Foundation?

2009-01-20 by mjr

I thought that Koha: Users and Developers of Open Source (KUDOS) and Koha Libre Association (KohaLA) were both Koha Interest Groups, but Nicole’s post about ALA Midwinter makes me think I’ve got it wrong:

“KUDOS (KOHA Users and Developers of Open Source) Meeting. NOTE: This is for users of Koha only. Libraries who are interested in Koha, but have not yet signed a contract with a support provider or implemented Koha on their own, should attend the Koha Interest Group Meeting– see below.”

So what’s an interest group? Why would we want to keep current users and interested people apart? I think current users are our most honest advocates.

How do other free software projects structure their community? I’m familiar with LUGs and drupal groups, but haven’t really got involved with much else yet. Do the names confuse you too?

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