Category Archives: Community

Do you think Directgov Delivers?

2009-12-15 by mjr

Directgov is the Government’s official website for the general public. As both a member of the public and a parish councillor, I use it fairly often to look things up. Sometimes it’s surprisingly good, but much of the time, it’s a frustrating page-hunt and leaves me going around … Continue reading →

Posted in Cooperatives, SPI | Comments Off on Do you think Directgov Delivers?

SPI November 2009

2009-11-11 by mjr

An announcement for this meeting just dropped into my inbox with “Apologies for the lateness of this announcement; some crossed wires”. It will be in #spi of irc.oftc.net as usual, at 2000 UTC. The agenda is available online and someone … Continue reading →

Posted in SPI | Tagged , , , , , | 1 Comment

PDF: how can we avoid over-using Pretty Difficult Files for citizens?

2009-11-11 by mjr

With the more political/government side of my work for our co-op, I often send emails like this:
“Please can you resend the information as plain text, ISO OpenDocument, html, PDF or something else standardised? OpenOffice.org can load most Microsoft Office and save as ISO OpenDocument and PDFs. If you’re stuck … Continue reading →

Posted in Cooperatives, SPI | Comments Off on PDF: how can we avoid over-using Pretty Difficult Files for citizens?

Windows 7: Released with known critical bug

2009-10-28 by mjr

The debian project defines a critical bug as “makes unrelated software on the system (or the whole system) break, or causes serious data loss, or introduces a security hole on systems where you install the package.” FSF Europe reported that … Continue reading →

Posted in SPI | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 7 Comments

Final Decision Time: Koha Foundation Options

2009-10-23 by mjr

Thomas Dukleth writes in: “Remember to vote for your choices in the final Koha foundation forming election before the poll closes on the 25th. Turnout in the final Koha foundation forming election is lower than in the previous preliminary poll … Continue reading →

Posted in Koha, SPI | Tagged , , , , , , | 1 Comment

SPI October 2009

2009-10-14 by mjr

A board meeting of Software in the Public Interest will take place on irc.oftc.net #spi tonight (Wed 14 Oct) at 20:00 UTC. The meeting announcement was posted only yesterday, containing a proposal to hold a debian domain. The proposal says … Continue reading →

Posted in SPI | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Betting on British Broadband Bugfixing

2009-10-05 by mjr

High-speed internet links are something that makes FOSS development much easier, but I’m still having reliability problems with my ADSL. A fringe benefit of moving to a more open Linux-based router is that I can see what’s going wrong in more detail. But now I have to gamble … Continue reading →

Posted in Cooperatives, SPI | Comments Off on Betting on British Broadband Bugfixing

SPI September 2009

2009-09-16 by mjr

Once again, the monthly board meeting of Software in the Public Interest will take place on irc.oftc.net #spi tonight (Wed 16 Sep) at 20:00 UTC. The meeting announcement was posted and there’s a proposal for an extra bank account and … Continue reading →

Posted in SPI | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Avon and Somerset Police’s Worrying Approach to High-Tech Crime

2009-08-27 by mjr

Last week, I wondered about Green or Pirate Party Membership and got some good comments. Thanks to all for those. There seemed a slim leaning towards the Greens and a good point made that “Pirate Party” is a very bad name in a coastal area like mine. I’ve ranted … Continue reading →

Posted in Cooperatives, SPI | Comments Off on Avon and Somerset Police’s Worrying Approach to High-Tech Crime

Youth Freedom and an IRC Q+A

2009-08-24 by mjr

Advertisers try to “get ’em young” to get them buying their wares from an early age. So why don’t we advertise freedom at young people more? The younger we make them aware of freedom, the more time they’ll spend defending … Continue reading →

Posted in SPI | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment