Skip to content or view mobile version

Home | Mobile | Editorial | Mission | Privacy | About | Contact | Help | Security | Support

A network of individuals, independent and alternative media activists and organisations, offering grassroots, non-corporate, non-commercial coverage of important social and political issues.

Summer Source Camp in Croatia

fwd/Imc Germany/Imc Translations | 07.09.2003 11:45 | Technology | World

August 29th the socalled "Summer Source Camp", a hacker and activist meeting began on an island in the adriatic ocean, 3 hours away from the croatic coast below palm trees. The camp, which was situated on a former military site of the yugoslavian army, was organised by the Tactical Technology Collective, Amsterdam and the Media Institute, Zagreb (short MAMA, www.mi2.hr). Spirit and purpose of the whole thing should be to bring together developers of free software-solutions with users from the NGO-world, to encourage further education and to animate a mutual dialogue.

Sommer Source Camp, Isle Vis
Sommer Source Camp, Isle Vis


On this meeting, that was about to last for 1 week not only theoretical topics should be discussed, such as the prinicals of GNU General Public License (resp. its comming amplification for web-based applications, e.g. production sysems of Indymedia) or discussions about what is copyright or proprietary software compared to free or "open source" software, but also practical things: workshops ("How do I install Linux?" [1]), video screenings round the topics netactivism, hacking and development, network-security and GPG/PGP encryption with a following keysigning party.

The parties of developers and useres are not clearly separated. Everybody is part of the pool of ideas and gives information and experiences to the other participants, instead of only being present as a consumer in lectures of alleged "experts". "Each of us is an expert, each of us has something to offer/present and nobody should be excluded" organisers point out again and again.

The various workshops in which you could offer know-how or in which you could learn something were accordingly casual and balanced.

First concepts were treated:

What is "FREE"? "FREE" means, if you can do the following with a thing:

  1. use it
  2. understand and adapt it
  3. copy, distribute and sell it
  4. publish changes and share it with others

To clear the antithesis between "free" (free of charge) and the right to sell a product it has to be pointed out that the word "free" in english is not definite. Beneath its meaning as "free of charge", "free" also means "free" in liberal terms ("Think free speech, not free beer"). Therefore alternatives in foreign languages are used: "libre", "libero", "livre", or: "Open Source".

"PROPRIETARY": at the users expense, closed code, "intellectual property", controlled and not accessable in terms of the items mentioned above.

"COMMERCIAL": can be free (in terms of free speech), but it doesn't have to; at the users expense and a product which is business-oriented.

"PUBLIC DOMAIN": the public has access; there is no expression of "intellectual property", but it depends in which country you are and if regional regulations allows the not-using of "intellectual property" anyway. Adjudication normally protects the rights of the copyright owner, "public domain" however is an expression which is widely not legally defined. (read more here: www.creativecommons.org).

"COMMONS"/"COLLABORATIVE PROPERTY": an old expression of property and economy as a collective says - shared resources and non-proprietary common goods. Today you can compare it with free/open source software, music (in view of social consensus), national parks and the copyleft-movement. A danger of the "commons" which is not really relevant anymore in the electronic era was the mis- or overcultivation: "too many cows = too little grass".

After that there was the first introduction game with provocative questions on which others had to anwer at random. Topics were, if you thought that each form of information should be freely accessible. While to the whole spectrum there were different basic opinions to the polarising questions, the consensus moved towards the attitude to make scientific and political information generally non-restrictively public and to protect private data. With equated arguments it was discussed if and to what extent proprietary software should be applied in your organisation. The supporters of open software brought forward arguments that it was not good to rely on shorthand practicability but to bear in mind longterm advantages of independence of huge corporate groups from the IT-industry.

On Sunday, August 31st there were discussions in three groups. The topic was “Intra/Inter- Developer Collaboration”. It was about communication within the developers-community. Democratic processes were distinguished as well as the making of sufficient documentation and the importance of teaching users how to participate in technological developing to make themselves independent of less swamped developers. Further encouragement and examples out of the circle of participats were: documantation in the form of FAQ, because those are easy to understand, but above all they are easier to write for the developers than complex, structured guidances, create and provide documentations for appliance for the assimilation of new features within a programm, as well as examples and optical illustration of the utility of software projects (screenshots!). According to the participants in this discussions the mantra of free/open source software development “Release early, release often” stays, because: software is not the actual product, but the “service” of a consecutively attended project with its community of developers and users.

In the opinion of the discussion groups it was important to encourage the cowork between different projects to foster social relations ("Think pivo on the beach"), to cultivate mutual (data-/protocol-) standards and therefore a catchphrase (“.doc-phonomenon”).

An audio-recording of the abstract of several discussion groups here.

On the Summer Source Camp in Vis there were more than 80 participants from approx. 35 countries. Among them people from Azerbaidschan, Tajikistan, Ukraine and of the Baltic states, Croatia/Kosovo/Serbia, Taiwan, Mongolia, Africa, from various countries of Europe and North America. Most of them come from the sectors development aid, advanced training of IT in threshold countries, development of applications to support local organisations in regions which are difficult to access (like Amazon) and the further education of emancipatory initiatives on location abandoning economic dependence on western industry to the greatest possible extent.

Moderators of the „Inter-/Intra-Developer Collaboration“ workshop you can hear in the audios are David Turner ("Gnu GPL Guru" Free Software Foundation), Jason Diceman Commons Group and Mako Hill (board member of "Software in the Public Interest" and Hardware-Manager/accountant of Debian GNU/Linux projects).

Finally something personal:

I’ve done my kitchen work, there are not many mosquitos and they are pretty gentle, sun is shining more or less non-stop, it’s not too hot, water is blue and pleasantly cooling. Now Vis has Indymedia-stickers.

Contact:

irc.freenode.net, channel #vis (not really busy).
summersource-l@tacticaltech.org (camp-mailinglist)

Links:

http://www.tacticaltech.org/summersource
http://www.mi2.hr/

[1] Short comparison between the different Linux distributions, which were introduced and explained during the camp:

RED HAT is the most widespread, commercial distribution with its extensive support-system, which is sold especially to bigger firms. Next to SuSE people start working with it, to make their first steps in OSS.

DEBIAN, had its 10th anniversary lately. At present it is organised by approx. 1500 freelancers. With about 13.000 programm packages on eleven different platforms (among them Sun and Macintosh) it is the biggest distribution worldwide, which offers good usability. Documentation is available in about 25 languages. In addition the Debian project has adopted a social contract, which should save the basic ideal of free software. The whole distribution includes no proprietary software at all.

A smaller, customised version of the debian distribution called „Debian NP“ (‚non profit’) for NGO-organisations and their spezial economic needs are being composed at the moment.

Compared to other distributions SLACKWARE is developed by only a handful in solo attempt. The advantage of Slackware is the good support of old hardware, e.g. 386 platforms, which would be waste under normal circumstances. But with Slackware they proper for e-mail, text-based websurfing and simple communication.

DYNE:BOLIC: Similar to Knoppix a distribution bootable by CD with the focus on multimedia and audiostreeming. Probably in the future it will be the standard toolkit of many media-activists. (www.dyne.org)

Comment: Relating to a Dyne:bolic workshop Jaromil (maintainer of Dyne: bolic) and a croatian hacker played a joke to create a version of a Linux distribution which is bootable live under Windows, which begins with an autorun skript first to eliminate the Microsoft operating system as soon as the CD is put into the drive and boots Linux afterwards. And even if you can estimate that this skript won’t find its way to regular releases of the Dyne:bolic distribution it was an impressive demonstration of primitive flaws of the “most popular operating systems in the world” and why a change to other operation systems is worth it.




fwd/Imc Germany/Imc Translations

Comments

Display the following comment

  1. yeah I went. — r
Upcoming Coverage
View and post events
Upcoming Events UK
24th October, London: 2015 London Anarchist Bookfair
2nd - 8th November: Wrexham, Wales, UK & Everywhere: Week of Action Against the North Wales Prison & the Prison Industrial Complex. Cymraeg: Wythnos o Weithredu yn Erbyn Carchar Gogledd Cymru

Ongoing UK
Every Tuesday 6pm-8pm, Yorkshire: Demo/vigil at NSA/NRO Menwith Hill US Spy Base More info: CAAB.

Every Tuesday, UK & worldwide: Counter Terror Tuesdays. Call the US Embassy nearest to you to protest Obama's Terror Tuesdays. More info here

Every day, London: Vigil for Julian Assange outside Ecuadorian Embassy

Parliament Sq Protest: see topic page
Ongoing Global
Rossport, Ireland: see topic page
Israel-Palestine: Israel Indymedia | Palestine Indymedia
Oaxaca: Chiapas Indymedia
Regions
All Regions
Birmingham
Cambridge
Liverpool
London
Oxford
Sheffield
South Coast
Wales
World
Other Local IMCs
Bristol/South West
Nottingham
Scotland
Social Media
You can follow @ukindymedia on indy.im and Twitter. We are working on a Twitter policy. We do not use Facebook, and advise you not to either.
Support Us
We need help paying the bills for hosting this site, please consider supporting us financially.
Other Media Projects
Schnews
Dissident Island Radio
Corporate Watch
Media Lens
VisionOnTV
Earth First! Action Update
Earth First! Action Reports
Topics
All Topics
Afghanistan
Analysis
Animal Liberation
Anti-Nuclear
Anti-militarism
Anti-racism
Bio-technology
Climate Chaos
Culture
Ecology
Education
Energy Crisis
Fracking
Free Spaces
Gender
Globalisation
Health
History
Indymedia
Iraq
Migration
Ocean Defence
Other Press
Palestine
Policing
Public sector cuts
Repression
Social Struggles
Technology
Terror War
Workers' Movements
Zapatista
Major Reports
NATO 2014
G8 2013
Workfare
2011 Census Resistance
Occupy Everywhere
August Riots
Dale Farm
J30 Strike
Flotilla to Gaza
Mayday 2010
Tar Sands
G20 London Summit
University Occupations for Gaza
Guantanamo
Indymedia Server Seizure
COP15 Climate Summit 2009
Carmel Agrexco
G8 Japan 2008
SHAC
Stop Sequani
Stop RWB
Climate Camp 2008
Oaxaca Uprising
Rossport Solidarity
Smash EDO
SOCPA
Past Major Reports
Encrypted Page
You are viewing this page using an encrypted connection. If you bookmark this page or send its address in an email you might want to use the un-encrypted address of this page.
If you recieved a warning about an untrusted root certificate please install the CAcert root certificate, for more information see the security page.

Global IMC Network


www.indymedia.org

Projects
print
radio
satellite tv
video

Africa

Europe
antwerpen
armenia
athens
austria
barcelona
belarus
belgium
belgrade
brussels
bulgaria
calabria
croatia
cyprus
emilia-romagna
estrecho / madiaq
galiza
germany
grenoble
hungary
ireland
istanbul
italy
la plana
liege
liguria
lille
linksunten
lombardia
madrid
malta
marseille
nantes
napoli
netherlands
northern england
nottingham imc
paris/île-de-france
patras
piemonte
poland
portugal
roma
romania
russia
sardegna
scotland
sverige
switzerland
torun
toscana
ukraine
united kingdom
valencia

Latin America
argentina
bolivia
chiapas
chile
chile sur
cmi brasil
cmi sucre
colombia
ecuador
mexico
peru
puerto rico
qollasuyu
rosario
santiago
tijuana
uruguay
valparaiso
venezuela

Oceania
aotearoa
brisbane
burma
darwin
jakarta
manila
melbourne
perth
qc
sydney

South Asia
india


United States
arizona
arkansas
asheville
atlanta
Austin
binghamton
boston
buffalo
chicago
cleveland
colorado
columbus
dc
hawaii
houston
hudson mohawk
kansas city
la
madison
maine
miami
michigan
milwaukee
minneapolis/st. paul
new hampshire
new jersey
new mexico
new orleans
north carolina
north texas
nyc
oklahoma
philadelphia
pittsburgh
portland
richmond
rochester
rogue valley
saint louis
san diego
san francisco
san francisco bay area
santa barbara
santa cruz, ca
sarasota
seattle
tampa bay
united states
urbana-champaign
vermont
western mass
worcester

West Asia
Armenia
Beirut
Israel
Palestine

Topics
biotech

Process
fbi/legal updates
mailing lists
process & imc docs
tech