The Sad State Of FSF's High Priority Projects

[V!NCENT]

Well in that case, I suppose you *could* do a google earth replacement..... that sucks

Yeah, lol

But who cares about Google Earth? Nobody has it installed anymore (that I know of). I'll invent a name for it; hypeware.

[droidhacker]

Yeah, lol

But who cares about Google Earth? Nobody has it installed anymore (that I know of). I'll invent a name for it; hypeware.

Well, it is a little better than that actually -- there is some data that it outputs that is very useful, coordinates, elevation, eye altitude. These could be generated by a topographical map as well, but the visual link between the topographical map and the satellite imagery is actually quite powerful. I'm not too certain how many people actually realize that you can view a 3D landscape. I actually used it once to set up a long range wifi relay network, I set up some tripods with pairs of transceivers and solar panels, and positioned them on high spots to run a network to somewhere that no cell signal dare reach. Its neat what you can do with an 80 watt 12v solar panel, an RV battery, and a couple of Ubiquity Power Stations....

[V!NCENT]

Well, it is a little better than that actually -- there is some data that it outputs that is very useful, coordinates, elevation, eye altitude. These could be generated by a topographical map as well, but the visual link between the topographical map and the satellite imagery is actually quite powerful. I'm not too certain how many people actually realize that you can view a 3D landscape. I actually used it once to set up a long range wifi relay network, I set up some tripods with pairs of transceivers and solar panels, and positioned them on high spots to run a network to somewhere that no cell signal dare reach. Its neat what you can do with an 80 watt 12v solar panel, an RV battery, and a couple of Ubiquity Power Stations....

Did you make money, providing ISP services?

[droidhacker]

Did you make money, providing ISP services?

I wasn't really doing much in the way of providing ISP services. Private network for relative with more money than brains... Made a few $$, but had a lot of fun messing around with the equipment.

[V!NCENT]

I wasn't really doing much in the way of providing ISP services. Private network for relative with more money than brains... Made a few $$, but had a lot of fun messing around with the equipment.

Very nice

[dyfet]

We do have an active and forward moving project for replacing Skype with entirely free (as in freedom) software that offers standards compliant mesh networks as part of the FSF skype initiative. This effort includes active releases of our sip protocol mediation server, GNU SIP Witch, which is already a formal package in the GNU Project, as well as development of a mesh capable free software client as part of GNU Free Call. I would not describe what we do as "open source", as we are a free software project, but we do fully welcome all participation. Information about our architecture, plans, and activities can be found at http://www.gnutelephony.org. We are also developing SIP connectivity as an addon to friendica, which is secure and federated distributed social networking that already works.

In regard to reverse engineering Skype, it is not a process we are interested in, as we want to make sure the foundation is designed from the beginning to assure privacy and support anonymity, as well as federated operation, rather than imposing a provider as a mediation between all communications or for finding users. We don't wish to replace Skype so much as we wish to make the need for "a" Skype, as something that needs to be hosted or otherwise controlled by a single provider, to disappear. We are interested also in entirely self-organizing calling networks, such as for emergency services.

However, I will note that while we (within GNU Telephony) are not ourselves interested in it, reverse engineering is by itself an entirely legal and protected activity when done correctly.

[sbergman27]

That is the thing I don't understand about all this "microkernel" stuff.

During the Halloween season, I watched a movie about a girl who had died in a car accident at the beginning of the movie, but spent 90 minutes of footage not realizing it. She moved to another city. Got a job as a church organist. Got fired. Got another job. And then the zombies came and took her away to the underworld or wherever, where she finally had realized she belonged.

It reminded me very much of microkernel developers.

[DaemonFC]

Yeah, lol

But who cares about Google Earth? Nobody has it installed anymore (that I know of). I'll invent a name for it; hypeware.

I use KDE's Marble virtual globe. In some ways it's better than Google Earth, in some ways it's worse. But, it is free and open source software and it uses OpenStreetMap for driving directions and such. OpenStreetMap data is a combination of public domain and free content licensed maps. Even if you replaced Google Earth with a free software client, you still need a map source that's not from them, because their Google Earth data is not under a free content license.

I think Marble is the closest thing that exists to fulfilling the goals of an open Google Earth replacement. Though again, I admit it has a few rough edges. I don't really like Google software anyway. They tend to make nonfree software that needs WINE libraries or open core software like Chromium that is a bad port of the Windows version and opens your system up to attack from what claims to be a security feature. I think Google just has no idea how to write good software and the abundance of Windows programmers that they hire probably doesn't help.