I’m “celebrating” by offsetting my Facebook use with greater use of Diaspora, an alternative that let’s you keep strong control over your data. I don’t know many people there, but it’s more lively (about things I care about anyway) than I’ve heard described, and I’ve found some interesting people I wouldn’t have otherwise fonnd. Sign… Continue reading How I’m celebrating Facebook’s IPO
Category: FOSS
For “free and open-source software”
Document Freedom Day 2012
If you create documents in closed or proprietary formats, at a basic level you do not control them. I wrote about it at length last year. Consider, please, saving and sharing your documents in an open format. LibreOffice and OpenOffice.org are two (related) mature and robust office suites that are both free (libre) and open… Continue reading Document Freedom Day 2012
A good (humanistic?) “sermon” with fish and loaves
Software Freedom Law Center executive director Eben Moglen lays it down about the freedom of ideas and the stewardship of human minds and the free access those minds need to information. Also, a fascinating review of the development of United States copyright law with respect to early immigration and religious freedom. (Made me think about… Continue reading A good (humanistic?) “sermon” with fish and loaves
E-text and print on demand publishing, collaboratively
Can’t wait to try a newly-released piece of publishing software: Booktype. Ah, but the download servers for the software is down! So watch this and think on what a self-organizing group of people might develop. Booktype, the open source publishing platform. from Sourcefabric on Vimeo.
The language of faith cries to be free
In the open-source software world, advocates make a distinction between “free as in beer” and “free as in freedom.” While free (of cost) beer is nice, the freedom to share, modify, extract and even profit from (depending on the license) is truly precious, and has allowed an ecosystem to develop around not only software but… Continue reading The language of faith cries to be free
Liberate your documents by choosing a better format
Microsoft owns the ideas around word processing, spreadsheet and presentation software. “I want it in a .doc” “Put it Excel” “Look, another PowerPoint!” But it need not and should not be that way. I’ll cut to the chase: if you create content in proprietary format, you will always depend upon the company that supplies the… Continue reading Liberate your documents by choosing a better format
What I’m reading; all nonfiction
I have four three-ring binders on my desk. Each with a print-out of a book in it. I shuttle them in turn between home and work, since peculiarly, they touch both on my work and personal — that is to say, church — life, and I thought you might be interested in these four nonfiction… Continue reading What I’m reading; all nonfiction
Hymnals should be open
Long-time readers will understand why I carp on hymnody, and why I return to the subject now. Hymnals have been practical works of theology in churches in the modern era; hymnals shape our religious vocabularies. Unitarian Universalists are theologically plural — in theory anyway. So why is there a lone denominational hymnal? Even the British… Continue reading Hymnals should be open
CiviCRM a try
I’ll be a bit quiet for a few days — busy time at Day Job, Thanksgiving, plus much of what I’m doing is behind the scenes. Planning and preparation. (Be sure to follow me at Twitter at 2udc; anything short and timely will come out there.) I want to start off right, so I think… Continue reading CiviCRM a try
Church Tool try-out
There aren’t that many church-focused free- and open-source content management systems. Perhaps I should be happy there are any, but each of them has its quirks. I found kOOL — even the name is a quirk — at churchtool.org. I found it because I was looking for church-related uses for the typesetting language LaTeX, which… Continue reading Church Tool try-out