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Please write this up in longer form (or point out where you have already) if you get a chance! I'm vaguely aware that the French FOSS community is possibly the

Please write this up in longer form (or point out where you have already) if you get a chance! I'm vaguely aware that the French FOSS community is possibly the strongest (which includes having strong institutions like Framasoft) in the world, but know hardly any details, and I think very few people in the English speaking FOSS world even have that vague awareness.

boramalper 9y ago
I think same goes with Germany, and maybe Spain as well. Chaos Computer Club is famous, but guifi.net[1] deserves to known more (than it currently is)! > Guifi.net is a free, open and neutral, mostly wireless telecommunicationscommunity network, with over 33,000 active nodes and about 46,000 km of wireless links (as of April 2017). The majority of these nodes are located in Catalonia and the Valencian Community, in Spain. but the network is growing in other parts of the world. The network is self-organized and operated by the users using unlicensed wireless links and open optical fibre links. > The nodes of the network are contributed by individuals, companies and administrations that freely connect to an open network of telecommunications and extend the network wherever the infrastructure and content might not otherwise be accessible. Nodes join the network following the self-provision model since the whole structure is explicitly open to facilitate understanding how it is structured, so that everyone can create new sections as required. That results in an network infrastructure commons that provides abundant connectivity. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guifi.net https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guifi.net [1]: https://guifi.net/en/node/38392 https://guifi.net/en/node/38392
sametmax 9y ago
Well basically framasoft is a mature community (created 17 years ago) around free software. First, they were just a portal (https://framasoft.org/ https://framasoft.org/) listing good FOSS you could download for windows and a forum to help each other. It was the best, most stable and reliable source for that kind of info at the time, and lead a lot of people gaining trust in FOSS, trying out Linux, or like me, dig more and start programming. Eventually they got to write informative and engaged blog posts. They always took the time to explain why and what, and I'm very grateful for that. It's transparent attitude I respect. Because of this they got echoed by framous voices such as Tristan Nitot (from Mozilla at the time) and Sebsauvage (pretty much the most famous nerd blog in the country). Among their projects, they made the "portable" versions of free software quite popular, to the extend of creating a USB key where you could store your fav stuff (OOo, Firefox, vlc, etc) and carry a decent working environment anywhere you went, with a launcher on the systray. Then they got involved politically, especially against the DADVSI law in France. They also teamed up with "la quadrature du net", a quite tenacious group trying to defend the free Web (that teamed up with wikimedia :)). The impressive feat here is the fact they are a small team, with very low budget, but yet managed to involve the "Conseil d'Etat" and the "Conseil constutionnel". I like the fact they did it every time in a formal, respectful manner. In politics, it's quite hard to do. The last accomplishment of framasoft is to be alive. It's all about the constant work they've done, again and again, as they didn't have major actors to help them or a big source of income. Today they host a load of open source web services to offer alternative to google agenda, google doc, dropbox, twitter, etc. In total 27 ranging from doodle clones to pastebins. The service are not as good as the original ones, but they work damn well and are free, using open formats. I make sure I donate to them once in a while even if I don't go to their site that much anymore. But I do use their agenda, syncing it on thunderbird and my android phone.

boramalper 9y ago

I think same goes with Germany, and maybe Spain as well. Chaos Computer Club is famous, but guifi.net[1] deserves to known more (than it currently is)! > Guifi.net is a free, open and neutral, mostly wireless telecommunicationscommunity network, with over 33,000 active nodes and about 46,000 km of wireless links (as of April 2017). The majority of these nodes are located in Catalonia and the Valencian Community, in Spain. but the network is growing in other parts of the world. The network is self-organized and operated by the users using unlicensed wireless links and open optical fibre links. > The nodes of the network are contributed by individuals, companies and administrations that freely connect to an open network of telecommunications and extend the network wherever the infrastructure and content might not otherwise be accessible. Nodes join the network following the self-provision model since the whole structure is explicitly open to facilitate understanding how it is structured, so that everyone can create new sections as required. That results in an network infrastructure commons that provides abundant connectivity. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guifi.net https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guifi.net [1]: https://guifi.net/en/node/38392 https://guifi.net/en/node/38392

sametmax 9y ago

Well basically framasoft is a mature community (created 17 years ago) around free software. First, they were just a portal (https://framasoft.org/ https://framasoft.org/) listing good FOSS you could download for windows and a forum to help each other. It was the best, most stable and reliable source for that kind of info at the time, and lead a lot of people gaining trust in FOSS, trying out Linux, or like me, dig more and start programming. Eventually they got to write informative and engaged blog posts. They always took the time to explain why and what, and I'm very grateful for that. It's transparent attitude I respect. Because of this they got echoed by framous voices such as Tristan Nitot (from Mozilla at the time) and Sebsauvage (pretty much the most famous nerd blog in the country). Among their projects, they made the "portable" versions of free software quite popular, to the extend of creating a USB key where you could store your fav stuff (OOo, Firefox, vlc, etc) and carry a decent working environment anywhere you went, with a launcher on the systray. Then they got involved politically, especially against the DADVSI law in France. They also teamed up with "la quadrature du net", a quite tenacious group trying to defend the free Web (that teamed up with wikimedia :)). The impressive feat here is the fact they are a small team, with very low budget, but yet managed to involve the "Conseil d'Etat" and the "Conseil constutionnel". I like the fact they did it every time in a formal, respectful manner. In politics, it's quite hard to do. The last accomplishment of framasoft is to be alive. It's all about the constant work they've done, again and again, as they didn't have major actors to help them or a big source of income. Today they host a load of open source web services to offer alternative to google agenda, google doc, dropbox, twitter, etc. In total 27 ranging from doodle clones to pastebins. The service are not as good as the original ones, but they work damn well and are free, using open formats. I make sure I donate to them once in a while even if I don't go to their site that much anymore. But I do use their agenda, syncing it on thunderbird and my android phone.