Suggestions for FLOS biketour IC tools

Add your recommendations and comments on the possible FLOS communication tools below:

The aim of this page is to collect a list of possible libre and open-source information and communication technology tools for Biketour purposes.

General arguments about why ecotopiabiketour aims to use and promote FLOS, can be found here.

Keep adding your suggestions below - an overview of the most promising/likely tools from this list for BT (so far) can be found here: BT FLOSS Outcomes

Places to Look / Forums / FLOSS lists

• FLOSS manuals [1] - really useful list of some FLOSS software in similar categories to the one below
• RU's Radical Services list [2]
• Tech Tools for Activism ebook: [3]
• Valo-cd [4]
• Free Sofware Foundation [5]
• Freedom Box 'leaving the public cloud' page

eMail

Currently: Horde/IMP on an encrypted server. Lists are run by EYFA.

Preferences: To ensure communication from "outside" and "within" the Biketour Organisers collective. Something that is secure, private, does not steal our data; and will possible filter our messages by subject; keep our lovely name@ecotopiabiketour addresses; with unlimited or lots of 'labels';

Known Alternatives:

• Mail services from tech collectives such as the riseup birds / Nodo50 / Nadir / So36 / N-1:
  • See RU's Radical Services list here [6]
• Round-cube
• Squirrel Mail
• Horde/IMP (allows online PGP)
• Thunderbird
  • (And portable thunderbird here)
• Use one of the many free email addresses that often come along with a web hosting contract: If any association or person rents a webspace and registres a domai such as www.myname.net or www.nicepeople.org, sometimes up to 50 email addresses can be installed easily, using the ending @myname.net or @nicepeople.org. If you organise yourself with 50 friends, pay 10eur per month of hosting fees and give everyone an email address, then this would be 20cents per month per person. For email in you own hands, without helping a big corporation making more profit, without advertisement and sometimes even much more ecological.

Adding Encryption

• GPG is the standard (and the highest one too): the easiest way to install this is to use thunderbird with the enigmail add-on installed: from there setup through the wizard is fairly easy. Then, don't forget to share your public key (but not your private one!) with anyone who you want to send encrypted email to you. Everyone should setup email encryption, otherwise you're writing your emails as if on a postcard.
• add-ons for GPG should also be available for other email clients such as outlook (but why use outlook - it's not FLOSS)
• It would be good to install some sort of encryption for the mailing lists too - what software are our current ones on? Sympa definitely has this as a possibility - a quick internet search found a few.
• does this offer a way of encrypting a mailing list? mailman, GnuPG and Exim

Calendar

Currently not using anything? Maybe our self-hosted owncloud.

Preference: For Diary Planning. For arranging meetings. Within the email service or not.

Known Alternatives:

• ical/caldav are open formats (I think) and it should be fairly easy to install a CalDav or ical server on the ecobytes hosting service... a quick search of sourceforge threw up this: http://sourceforge.net/projects/modcaldav/?source=directory
• Then there are a huge range of clients available that can support these - the lightning add-on for thunderbird can do it, and most linux distros will have their own clients. These clients will generally support gcal as well, which makes the transition easier...

• Doodle (Open-source and self-hosted version on https://doo.rankenste.in/)
• Paper and pen
• owncloud

Website & Blog

Currently: wordpress-based, privately hosted website through the very cool Ecobytes :)

Voice over IP

Currently: mostly private Skype accounts :( Preferences: Voice and or video meetings.

Known Alternatives:

• THere is an open VOIP standard - XMPP (or more specifically the jingle extension to it).

http://www.jabber.org/ hosts XMPP accounts - it might be possible to host our own as well?? There are a variety of clients available for this: see this list (list of clients). Google Talk also uses this protocol which means that people using other clients/hosts can talk to people using Google Talk. (unlike skype - where you have to be on skype)

• SIP is another standard

• Mumble
• Pigin (supports XMPP)
• Adium (for Mac OS)

Collaborative working on texts / documents / archive

Currently: mediawiki wiki - but its not 'secure'

Preferences: Getting organised / handover / archive / storage / public space with private options

Known Alternatives

• Crabgrass
• Ethercalc [7] (where does the data get stored though????)
• Etherpad - can be installed on our own server? I think there's a risup host too. Also pirate pad.
• abiword - a FOSS wordprocessor that also supports collaboration (abicollab) - there is a server at: https://abicollab.net (I don't know if it's possible to host your own server for this).
• tinymce (not absolutely sure this suppports collaboration but looks good generally?)
• kune.ourproject.org ?

• It is possible to have a totally private mediawiki? However it is not possible to do this in a secure way making it private page by page, so it would have to be a seperate wiki from this one.

Collaborative project / task management

Preferences: a shared collaborative task management list - maybe in groups by topic

• Bettermeans http://bettermeans.com/front/index.html (open source / democratic but not 'private')
• Fengu (?)
• Owncloud?

• Kune.ourproject.org

ourproject.org

Collaborative Mapping

Previously: Gmaps and Street maps

Preferences: Decentrally collecting tips for places to visit, lay out routes, mark interesting regions, overlap with other interesting thematical maps/layers (e.g. from other tours or bike maps)

Known Alternatives:

• http://www.openstreetmap.org

* http://opencyclemap.org/
* http://openptmap.org/
* lot's of services based on openstreetmap basic map data: http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/List_of_OSM_based_Services

• http://open.mapquest.co.uk/
  • a typical example how big corporations (mis-)use open source data for their own purposes: mapquest is a company of AOL.
  • But it does use open data and allow it to be edited - and the search works
• http://osmtools.de/easymap/
  • takes a little while to get used to it, but pretty self-explaining. unfortunately not suitable for collaboration, since the map has to be locally saved (and then transferred on a web site) each time.
  • this map was made with easymap: http://www.memfarado.org/projects/ecotopiabiketour/2013/route/map/map.html
  • https://www.mapbox.com/tilemill/ - program for mac/windows and ubuntu - allows you to create maps

Examples

• http://vivirbien.mediavirus.org : collaborative mapping of solidarity economy

Route Planners

Previously: G-Maps' routeplanning function

Preferences: Make use of free map data in easy to handle, FLOSSy route calculation tools

Known Alternatives:

• http://bbbike.de
• http://www.anachb.at
• http://www.bikeroutetoaster.com/ : Bike Route Toaster has a free to use Course creator that allows people to prepare routes using Open Street Maps, Open Cycle Maps (and also the generic Googlemaps). It has an auto route option using OSM that works fairly well and allows to route within bike paths (Google maps routing does not allow this). other advantages are: - If you input your estimated average speed it can give you your estimated time for that route; - It gives you an altitude profile; - It can supply you with a cue sheet with directions; - You can save the route into a "*.gpx" file that can be loaded into comercial gps devices or smartphone apps, such as Osmand (Offline gps app for Android devices). Disadvantages: - The learning curve may scare some people. Is not that is hard to use, but is different; For example, you cannot search for a location, you must zoom in that location and then you can start adding way-points. But if you open another window or tab in you browser with open street maps, you can easily circumvent this problem.
• http://www.gpsies.com/ : could be a nice 1st step towards an alternative; but still bearing many characteristics of non-FLOSSyness, namely:
  • very present links to G00+, FB
  • a forum which is in fact a G00 group
  • not really an "about" explanation page there...?
  • four different G00 and FB trackers operating in the background
  • featuring embedded multimedia content from y0u2b or p!casa
  • it is using mapquest data (company owned by A0L)

File hosting / File sharing

Preferences: Anyone being able to easily provide larger files for exchange (photos, maps, ...) which are too big for mailing lists and might not interest everyone on a list.

Known Alternatives:

• wiki (not secure and not really the purpose of it, but possible)
• FTP as the technology; FTP clients (like filezilla) as the tool
• EyeOS (?)
• sparkleshare?
• Owncloud?
• samba and openVPN to share a folder over the internet - might be complicated, might be insecure - but might also allow a folder to be mounted as if a local folder, cross-platform? Probably wouldn't be good for huge amounts of people.
• Other file sharing servers: FreeNas. This should be supported my most if not all operating systems without needing extra software (you would add a shared folder I think).
• torrents - good for sharing really large files but needs a few people to have the file in the first place...
• Ubuntuone - not ideal but better than google docs as linked to the development of OS-software
• tahoe-LAFS : distributed file systems with encryption and 'fine-grained' access controlled - whoever's running the servers can't access all your files.git-annex-assistant can add dropbox-like functionality to this. S4 is a commercial provider which provides access to this...

Social Networking

Currently we have a facebook page with 1000's of likes :(

Preferences: Something that does not track our friends or circles for suspicious behavior when we think it is a closed network ... it is not. Something that connects us as a 'bridge' to the mainstream - so we do not constantly talk within the same circles... our 'outreach' of you will.

Known Alternatives:

• Diaspora

This is a federated and decentralised social network - and originated the idea of having different aspects (groups of contacts you can share something with - which was then copied by facebook and google plus).plugin to post to diaspora from wordpress

• we.riseup.net (based on the crabgrass software; not mainstream)
• Identica
• frendica - decentralised and can federate with diaspora, identica, twitter and others - maybe facebook? Says it's easy to install on own server
• faceleft - not a joke, znet / zcommunications are trying to launch this and have been joined by greek revolutionary party syriza: http://www.zcommunications.org/facelefts-aims-by-michael-albert However, it's not clear whether this will be open source software.
• Libertree
• There's a wikipedia list of software and protocols here.
• "simple, good old" forums:
  • Ecotopia Forum from the website ??? would probably not have the same 'reach'
• related to social networking - we should encourage people to use rss feeds as a way of getting updates about bt/ news in general - this is an open standard and better than using facebook/twitter/etc. See bottom of page for more on this.

Micro Blogging

Currently we have a Twitter account but do not use it :)

• • we should delete this, or make it clear that people should go to an equivalent on identi.ca from within its description --Nick--

Preferences: Same as above

Known Alternatives:

• Identi.ca (and the status net software statusnet. Looks like a new 'pump.io' piece of software is also being worked on).
• wordpress (also works for above..not sure if this counts as microblogging!)

Question: is this really essential communication????

Web > tel : Bridging

Currently use expensive sms mobile phones :(

Preferences: Cheap way of providing (short) info (sms style) to global phone networks from the web (for example when we are on the road or others are on the road to join us)

Known Alternatives:

• Not sending them
• Web phone ???
• some countries may have specific networks that allow this: e.g. Orange in Moldova...
• Lumicall

Graphics Tools

Preferences: To make things look cool with a conscience...

Know Alternatives:

• Gimp [8] (vector designs and 2d artwork)
  • Gimpshop [9] (building on gimp but trying to be like photoshop)
• inkscape [10] (vector images): our logo was made with this!
• Scribus [11] (publishing software - alternative to Adobe indesign) (or a complicated/sophisticated version of publisher)
• Libre Office [12] - Libre Draw and Libre Impress
• Lightworks [13] (Non Linear video editing (comparable to FCP) - due to be released as OSS on Linux: 30 April 2013!!!!!!!)
• Blender [14] (animation)

Photo / Video / Media Sharing

Currently an internal gallery & private flickr and Youtube accounts :(

Preferences: To share our beautiful experiences as images and slide shows

Know Alternatives:

• Pingu
• Diaspora and associated cubbi.es (how organisable is this?)
• Plumi ? [15] (video sharing)
• Lychee is a really simple and nice open-source photo gallery software that is now being used for the Biketour 2013 photos

Operating Systems

• Linux!

The BIG one! This brings all of the above tools together and makes them easy, simple and fun: and makes sure you don't have microsoft or apple spyware on your computer! Plus, it's creative and gives you loads of possibilities for making your computer, laptop or tablet work and look the way you want.

• • Loads of options here: debian, ubuntu, linux mint, Open Suse - and different desktops: unity, cinnamon, KDE, gnome...take your pick and enjoy it!

• and for smartphone or tablet (if these have to be used)
• Android, NOT Iphone..
  • but ideally a modified version such as cyanogen mod which doesn't have the closed source google programs (and potentially spyware) on it.

Other Tools ????

Tools we are not yet aware of???

Preferences: That will make our online lives a better place - maybe a personal project? :)

Know Alternatives:

• freedom box!
  • a project to do what it says on the tin, freedom and privacy for the home, all of the above made easy! Look it up, check it out, contribute and support it in any way you can.

• RSS readers - these come in both open source and proprietary formats - open source is better, but any are good - rss and atom feeds are a great open standard for 'following' webpages and getting updates and news - this means you don't have to follow something on twitter or facebook
  • There are addons for firefox etc. which will do this: e.g. Newsfox

Tools and website which support a free web

• microdonations - because although there's free lunches from skips, and free software is free as in liberty (and sometimes free as in beer), if we can buy the developer a few coffees everyone ends up better off: mutual aid! Flattr looks like a good one for this - but they take a commission on donations (5-10%).

• http://www.monofueralle.info/

Spam filtering

• currently nicely done by google for the @bt mail.
• currently not done for the wiki
• currently akismet for wordpress.