Suggestions for FLOS biketour IC tools

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Revision as of 12:23, 6 April 2013 by BTcoord2013 (talk | contribs)
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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.


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 here [2]

eMail

Currently: mostly Google: But not the lists - these are run by Ecobytes :)

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 [3]
  • Round-cube
  • Squirrel Mail
  • Thunderbird
  • 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 use Gcal :(

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
  • Paper and pen

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
  • LibreOffice


Collaborative project / task management

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


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:

  • Street Map
  • 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

Examples

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?
  • 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.
  • 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

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
  • "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
  • 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...

Graphics Tools

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

Know Alternatives:

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

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 ? [4] (video sharing)

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
  • Cool Tool 2
  • Cool Tool 3 ...

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%).
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