Det finns få personer idag som kan gå genom en dag utan att någon gång använda sig av programvara. ?"ven om vi inte tänker på det själva så finns den där i bakgrunden, i telefonen, i bankomaten, i tidningen och i datorn. Vi tänker inte på det, men programvara är en del av vårt dagliga liv och vi är beroende av programvara för att kommunicera, arbeta och utbilda oss. <!--more--> Den kunskap vi tillsammans förvaltar lagras med hjälp av programvara. Tillgång till den programvaran styr möjligheten att ta del av kunskapen. Men programvara är också ett sätt för oss att uttrycka kunskap. Kunskapen om hur man förbättrar skärpan i en bild finns lagrad i olika bildbehandlingsprogram på marknaden. Den kunskapen blir tillgänglig för alla med den programvaran genom enkla val i ett par menyer. Programvaran som vi använder reflekterar åsikterna av den utvecklare eller det företag som utvecklade programvaran. Utvecklare av en webbläsare kan till exempel utforma programmet så att det blockerar alla försök att komma åt en webbsida som tillhör konkurrerande företag. Den här makten som placeras i händerna av de som utvecklar programvara är i mångt och mycket okontrollerad och kan utövas när som helst, var som helst, av vem som helst utvecklaren av programmet ger tillåtelse. Att återställa den balans mellan användarnas rättigheter och utvecklarna av programvara kräver att vi ger alla användare av programvara vissa friheter. Dessa friheter är friheten att använda en programvara för alla syften, att studera hur programmet fungerar, anpassa det efter sina egna ändamål och sprida sådana förändringar till andra. De här fyra friheterna representerar det som kallas för fri programvara. Fri programvara innebär att återställa mer än balansen mellan användare och utvecklare. Det innebär också att skapa en balanserad marknad där konkurrens inte kan ske genom att utestänga andra. Fri programvara innebär dock inte nödvändigtvis ekonomiska besparingar. Det kan hända att fri programvara i längden blir billigare för de organisationer som använder det, men besparingarna finns i ett samhällsperspektiv på en mycket längre sikt. Genom att utnyttja fri programvara kan vi alla arbeta tillsammans och skapa ett balanserat samhälle som inte utesluter någon och som ger alla människor lika tillgång till den information och kunskap som behövs för att fatta informerade beslut.

Nyligen var jag iväg med familjen under ett par dagar i Rom, Italien. Här finns några av de bilder jag tog på den resan, då vi bland annat besökte Vatikanmuseet, St Peters Basilika (550 trappsteg!), Spanska Trappan, Fontana di Trevi och Chigi-kapellet.

Under första veckan i mars 2005 bjöds jag och Karin Kosina från FSF Europe in tillsammans med ett antal andra föreläsare till Damaskus i Syrien för en workshop på fri programvara.

En bild jag tog på vägen hem genom Tingstadstunneln i Göteborg en kväll i mars.

Version 2 of GUADEC, this time dislocated in the Danish capital Copenhagen, can only be considered a success. With GNOME developers from almost every corner of the world and wonderful hosts from the Danish free software arena, and with Richard Stallman, Jim Gettys, Tim Janiks and others as speakers, next years organisers will have a tough time to live up to the users growing expectations of GUADEC. <!--more--> This is my version of a GUADEC diary. It is by no means an accurate statement of everything that happened for obvious reasons, but with this, together with other peoples diary, I think you'll get a general idea of what GUADEC is and what took place during those action-filled three days. I arrived from Gothenburg by train at roughly 11 o'clock on the day before the conference. Pippin, Snaggen and Stric had booked a four bed room at the Cab-Inn and we had decided that I would occupy the last of the beds. In order to get to Can-Inn we had decided to meet at the train station in Copenhagen once everyone had arrived by train. I had greatly overestimated the size of the train station and it only took me five minutes once I arrived to find the meeting place (the McDonalds restaurant at the station). Of course, the trains being what they are, I was roughly two hours early so I spent some time getting money from an ATM and reading a couple of chapters in Simon Singhs "The Code Book"; a book I would recommend everyone interested in cryptography to read. Stric, being the way he is, phoned me when he was 10 meters away from me and asked me if I wanted to shake hands. I can't even begin to imaging the confused looks that must have passed over my face at the time. Once everything was settled down though, we started to make headway towards Cab-Inn. After a while we started walking away from Cab-Inn though. The reason for this tour to see the scenery of Copenhagen was -- and this should come as no surprise -- Stric. In his defence, the rest of us didn't question his interpretation of dark paths on the map as rail roads, when in fact they represented water. Once the confusion was settled and the scales on the map finally made sense, we arrived at Cab-Inn relatively soon. The moment we got to Cab-Inn, we noticed their slogan; "Live Cheap In Luxury". The contradiction of that statement would not fail to confuse us, but more on that later on. At the Cab-Inn, an assortment of hackers were waiting for the ability to check in and we made our introductions to some of them and settled down for some idle chit chat until we was finally able to get our room. Even though it's a four bed room, the Cab-Inn rewards their guests with only one keycard. This would later prove to be problematic, but it would eventually sort itself out (much due to the fact that the Cab-Inn also has an extra, emergency key, for such events as are detailed later). Surprising ourselves, we found the room on the top floor without taking the wrong path even once and we entered what would come to be our prison -- sorry, home -- for the next three four days. We were half way out of the door and ready to head to the lobby again once we realised that the room seemed to be one bed short, but we found the forth bed under another bed just in time. To occupy our minds, we tried to find the lightswitch for the bathroom for a quarter of an hour or so. Actually, bathroom is an overstatement, shower/toilet-square-meter would probably describe this anomality better. Things would probably have gone easier if we had read the instructions on the keycard to the door first before flipping madly at switches for half an eternity until we realised that one of the switches by the door was actually a main switch, without which almost nothing would work in the room (I dare say almost nothing, because there were indeed some things which would work despite the status of the main switch, thus adding to the confusion). We make a lot of jokes about Cab-Inn and their cheap luxury though, but they do actually provide a wall-mounted manual in each room, describing how to unfold the table (using 2x3 fingers), assemble the chairs, watching TV and other things worth knowing if you're a hacker used to the logical elements of a computer. The events surrounding the discovery of water in the shower/toilet-square-meter led to the conclusion that Cab-Inn needed a HOWTO. At the time of this writing, no such thing has yet been created though, but for the convenience of anyone who would want to do so, I'm hereby giving you the full address of the Cab-Inn so that you can investigate the matters for yourself. I, as always, take no responsibility for any injury you might cause yourself or your family in doing so though. Cab Inn Scandinavia Vodroffsvej 55 DK-1900 Frederiksberg C After the cheap luxury had been reverse-engineered, Pippin discovered another anomality in the room. The anomality would thereafter be called "The Thingy", even after we discovered what it's real purpose was. For the curious, "The Thingy" was not in fact a tool for small children bondage, as Pippin originally suggested. Nor was it a chair, but, it was later revealed, a thingy to hold your suitcase. It always remained "The Thingy" though. We got down to the lobby again after a few minutes of idling and I bumped in and said hi to Telsa Gwynne, Alan Cox, Will Lashell and other hackers who was just getting checked in. I failed miserably at getting people to join us for lunch though, so the brave four trooped off and managed to find our way to an Indian restaurant which actually was quite nice, though slightly on the expensive side. After dinner we returned to the Cab-Inn and joined a group of hackers who were having something to drink before they were supposed to be joined by Leslie Proctor for dinner. Eventually, they managed to round up roughly twelve hackers and we set off into the night again -- half of us looking for drinks and half of us looking for food. Our brave leader found us a restaurant that conveniently served both, and everything was all and well for a while. Once we got back to the Cab-Inn, I have to admit that I was genuinely tired but forced myself to stay up for a while chatting with hackers in the lobby. After a while though I decided to borrow our only key from Stric and departed for our room where I relaxed for a minute or two, snuggled into bed, and without meaning to, accidently fell asleep. This was not what I had planned and certainly not to the rest of the groups liking since I was on the inside with the only key and a locked door. I figured that if they knocked on the door, I'd wake up. I was wrong. They had to borrow the "emergency key" from the reception to get into the room and they got ready to go to bed, took off my glasses which I had left on and went to sleep. I, of course, slept through this entire time and didn't wake up until three or four in the morning, looking slightly confused as to how they had gotten in without me noticing it. At 7.15 on the second day in Copenhagen, my cell phone signalled that it was time to get up. I obliged, although grudgingly and took a short shower before heading down to the lobby where I finally got to meet Leslie Proctor. Pippin had been bitching since we got to Copenhagen about getting a cab to Symbion Science Park, which is where GUADEC was held, but after a while we got into a group of hackers who went by train to the science park instead. The day at Symbion was largely uneventful, though I must compliment on the excellent breakfast and lunch which they had arranged for us, even if the breakfast lacked juice, something which was corrected until the second day of the event. The second way was slightly more eventful than the first one, first because I managed to bring my laptop so I could do some more useful work than the day before. Second because of Ximian's party at The Globe, an Irish Pub, which sported gratis beer and some food. Sometime after dinner, RMS decided to make his appearance and noticed immediately the problem with the program which said that GNOME was for "Linux". He got to work right away and started to offer to patch peoples programs. Unfortunately, I didn't have a chance to attend any of the sessions because I completely failed to keep track of time and ended up talking to a lot of people instead about various issues. In particular about the Free Software Foundation Europe, which is holding its first annual meeting of the board on the sixth of may, after which time a lot of the legal matters will be sorted out and we can start focusing on actually doing some good for the community. A bunch of hackers headed for the Irish pub named The Globe, where the party was to be held, which we somehow managed to stow every hacker into. I ended up drinking some fairly dry cider and listened to RMS and others complaining about the lack of food. Food finally arrived on trays being carried around by the staff. I left RMS to his own devices and headed upstairs with Will Lashell and Arathena (sorry, I forgot your last name). Will is, for lack of better words, just a really cool dude and we ended up chatting about quite a lot of different things during the evening, accompanied by Stric and others as well. In particular, we needed to explain to Arathena, who is just getting into GNOME hacking, who the various people in our community are. Unfortunately RMS had already left by the time so I wasn't able to introduce him to Arathena. We had a lot of laughs though, continuing after the pub opened up to the general public until at least I decided that it was time to head back to the hotel. Apparently, I got out there just before the ass signing event. Unfortunately, my sense of directions had stopped working sometime during the night and I ended up taking a fairly long way back to Cab Inn. It was somewhat nice to see other parts of Copenhagen though, including some of the larger shopping streets. When I finally got my directions straightened out, I was getting slightly hungry again, so I got a quick bite of something which I wouldn't really consider food. Back at the hotel, I quite quickly fell asleep and Snaggen, Stric and Pippin arrived back shortly after me. Up in the early morning on the third day, having gotten about four hours of sleep. Headed downstairs and off to Symbion where I arrived just in time for breakfast and later on, RMS' speech. The speech was actually quite different than what he usually does and I very much enjoyed it. After the speech, we gathered a BOF of 10 people or so to talk about software patents and how we could best organise our efforts against them. I would like to believe that it was actually rather productive. At this point, I was faced with a dilemma. I would very much have liked to stay for the duration of the third day and go back as I had planned on the fourth day, but I was also slightly pressed for time since I had to go over Gothenburg on my way back to pick up various things I had left behind. So I tried to find Stric and Snaggen, but them seemed to be missing, probably in one of the sessions. Sent a message to them later on instead and headed back to the hotel. Arrived at the hotel just in time to wish Alan a good morning and then rummaged through the room assembling my stuff and then speeding down to the train station. Of course, I missed the X2000 which would have taken me directly to Gothenburg, so I took another train over the bridge to Malmoe and then went with a regular train to Gothenburg. It took a few hours, but I safely arrived at Gothenburg around eight or nine that evening. Spent the night in Gothenburg and then headed back to my home town the next morning. And that was the end of a two week vacation which culminated with the GUADEC II. Too all who was there, I'd like to extend my greetings, and to the people arranging GUADEC, my warmest thanks. See you all next year!

So, after an eventfull trip to Paris, most developers seems to have gotten themselves home from GUADEC. Just in time for a beautiful monday morning! So what really did happen on GUADEC? Had I kept a journal whilst there, I might have remembered, but I didn't, so I don't. In particular, I met a lot of people whose names I can hardly remember, so "Hello out there, wherever you are!" <!--more--> This all started on thursday morning at 3 o'clock. Yes, I'm afraid that time is right. The aircraft was supposed to leave Arlanda airport at 07:30, and being about 120km away, it meant I had to get up at an ungodly hour to take the bus to the airport. When there, I met Alexander Larsson and Anders Carlsson, both of whom seemed much more awake than me which was explained by the fact that they had both gotten to Stockholm the night -before- and thus only had to travel about 10km in the morning. That's good thinking on their part, I believe. Of course, since we were flying from Arlanda, a much too small airport for the amount of aircrafts there, we had to wait until the airline got permission to tow the aircraft to the gate. Still, we had a very powerful tailwind which got us to Charles de Gaulle (or however it's spelled) on time. Pondered waiting for Ole Aamot, which was due to arrive from Oslo about the same time, but since he didn't appear anywhere within a sufficient amount of time after his plane left, we set off into the morning to try to get to the RER. Of course, when mathieu said that the RER traffics the airport directly, he obviously didn't consider the fact that you first have to actually get to Terminal 9, which is the place that it traffics. Still, the bus got us there in due time and after showing our complete ignorance in the french language (yes, we actually showed the ticket-salesperson a map and pointed to where we wanted to go), we got on a train and headed for our destination. The trip which mathieu said would take only 45 minutes seemed to take about an hour and a half. But when we went back to the airport yesterday, it did indeed seem to take 45 minutes, so our perception of time was probably a combination of extremely sucky train and lack of sleep. So, we arrived at the train station, supposedly not far from the hotel. Found a Telsa and various other people, I believe, though I didn't know that until later, the problem with only having to see people over the network. Everyone in real life should have big visible nametags with their IRC nicks. Perhaps this is something that can be implemented in the PDA-thingy that was discussed recently somewhere, so that whenever you're close to someone whose IRC nick you've spoken to on IRC, it gives off a beep. Just to bash mathieu just a little more, someone thought he said the station was but a 5 minute walk from the hotel. I suppose he meant the Metro station, because walking from the train station took about 15-20 minutes. ;-) Found the hotel suitably late and found out that there were some problems with the bookings, got the GUADEC guys on the case and everything was eventually resolved, though many people had to switch rooms on the second day. Down at ENST, just a 2 minute walk from the hotel, Miguel was introducing everyone to the others to try to coax them into talking. Eventually it seemed to produce results and people started drifting off into small groups of people to talk and to hack. The ad hoc networking was beautifully put together so that most people with a laptop could actually do various non-hacking things while hacking, like being on IRC. Afternoons were generally filled with various workshops, most of which I failed to attend, in part because I was looking for Tim Ney from the FSF who I had seen that morning, and part because I really didn't care much about those. Paris turned out to be a nice place to eat in, so I got food, which was good, because by getting there late and having hotel trouble, they had forgotten to feed us. Waah! After the workshops, a bunch of around 12 hackers drifted off to a nearby restaurant and invaded it. The food there was decent, but not very special. As usual, confusion is due whenever there's a bill on the table and it took a good 5 minutes to figure out how much should be paid and to actually raise that amount of money. French food seems somewhat expensive, but then again, I've never looked at how much Swedish food costs on restaurants for a rather long time. Up in the morning the next day. The organisers having the crazy idea that people would like to start hacking at 8. By 12, everyone seemed to have gotten there and the afternoon talks began. Missed the first ones while talking to Tim Ney, whom I had finally managed to nail down, but enjoyed the Nautilus and GTK+/whatever speech very much. Join dinner with the other hackers in the evening and then off to various pubs around ENST. I think I counted about 7 pubs in the vicinity, and there were GNOME hackers on every one it seemed, which was nice. Slowly strolled back to the hotel and spent the rest of the evening watching soap operas and comedies dubbed into french. Increadibly silly to watch Cybil in french, if you ask me. :-) Up at 8 again, coding until noon, various other stuff in the afternoon and then the HelixCode party in the evening. Choosed not to attend the HelixCode party, which in retrospect may not have been a good decision, but it made me quite awake on sunday morning, contradictory to some other hackers who arrived back at 1-3 in the night. Obviously, some people found pubs to go to after the party stopped. I'm not surprised. Sometime on the first day, they also crammed in various snacks and drinks (champagne or juice), which was very nice. And on the second day, Mathieu did a talk on a future GNOME Foundation, which is also very nice. Tim Ney said something which I feel is very true; the Free Software Foundation is very much an incubator. They nurse projects with funding and attention until they are large enough to stand on their own. Going home was not very eventfull, even though we managed to take the wrong train. You see, the RER B-line splits at one point and one train goes to the airport and another someplace else. We got someplace else. Eventually found the airport though, got to Arlanda in time for me to think I missed the buss, but in reality didn't since it was sunday and thus had to wait for 3 hours instead. C'est la vie. It's now monay morning and it's time to get to work again, but I have a feeling everyone is looking forward to GUADEC II. But before that, there will probably be plenty of events this summer, and I hope to see many people at those.

I probably should post something here, so here's some bits from The Bazaar (which is the most exciting thing that has happened in my life for the past 20 years or so). RMS was kind enough to let us sleep in his mothers appartment when we arrived too late in the evening to check into our "hotel" (Professor Dewar's appartment). Why we got late? Well, we had this car you know. And then it rained. And the water got into the electrical system, and then all sorts of things started to happen until we found out that by disabling a switch in the driver door, we could make the car function suitably well (meaning that the a dashboard lamp went blink-blink-blink, but at least the buzzer didn't go buzz-buzz-buzz). <!--more--> Then there was The Bazaar. Tom found a ridiculously expensive parking (considering we found a free parking the next day), and he ended up getting the car out from the parking after only 3-4 hours. It was raining very heavily at that point. Things got wet, and more importantly; I got wet. Brrr. Arrived back as the guards were telling people to get out of the showfloor. RMS was there. Guard said "if you don't get out of here, I will have you arrested." RMS said, "Well, I've never been arrested before. It might be interesting." He didn't though, so the late-night awards ceremonies went well and Miguel de Icaza arrived just in time to accept his award. Then there was a party. Very loud. Could hardly speak to people, so RMS dragged us away to a burmese restaurant after having lost people in various stages into the party. First we lost Tom, then someone went to get their car and didn't return for 30 minutes. Then Jay Sulzberger broke his glasses and we lost him in a near-by shop (or so we thought. He returned from somewhere else five minutes later). Then Tom decided to get another drink from the bar and went into the party again, much to RMS's agony because we lost two other people when we went in to drag him out. Eventually, it all sorted itself out and we went to the restaurant. Burmese restaurant didn't play burmese music. RMS had his laptop do that for us. Then a lady decided that she should join our local gathering and told RMS that computers are obsolete. She left a little later and we had lots of interesting food. Got back late to Professor Dewar's place, but luckily I had the key by this time. Got up at some ungodly hour to go back to the bazaar. Payed $15 for some sandwiches. Andover.Net party was fun. FAO Schwarz not so, though I did find another Swede there and Lisa (fellow hacker) was much delighted to hear us speak Swedish to each other (with great difficulty on my part I should add). Stayed in a small spot playing with blue plushy things and eating desert until we again dragged Tom out of there and back to Professor Dewars place. To the Bazaar. Went to Nat's speech on Bonobo, was dragged from it by Tim Ney and packed up the FSF booth. Went down to the car with everyone and lost Lisa. Found here a little later rummaging through the expo showfloor looking for left-over network cables that she promptly packed up and brought back with her. Drove back to Boston the next day. Spent two hours at Pepboys, having them replace things that weren't actually broken in the car. Eventually got back and crashed in Tech Sq. late at night. Now I'm back home, and already thinking about moving to Boston.