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Planet FSCI

In the age of “AI in everything”, one could wonder if writing and maintaining an individual blog is still relevant. “AI in everything” LLMs has gobbled up millions of lines of texts, audio, code and what not to generate its responses. Can an individual do better through their blog? Uncertain. But again, individual blogs are for a person’s own expression; of their thoughts, understandings and world view. It’s the human (touch).

Secure a nextcloud instance on Debian 7 Wheezy that can no longer get certificates via certbot

We were running a shared NextCloud instance at nextcloud.libreinfra.org for sometime on Debian GNU/Linux 7 Wheezy. It was setup on a shared hosting tool that is no longer maintained (Manu would know the details), upgrading the host was not possible. Most other services were migrated to other systems but this nextcloud service remained on this host. Sometime back certbot stopped working (likely because the openssl version is too old and it does not support newer crypto) and we could not continue using https, so this was left untouched for a long time.

We Have Lost a Charismatic and Energetic Member of the Community

On 13th September 2023, Abraham Raji from Kerala, an active member of FSCI, died in a water accident during a trip in the DebConf 2023.

Thank You Foss United

We are pleased to announce that we got a grant from FOSS United worth ₹1 lakh, which helps us in maintaining the existing various services we provide which includes, but not limited to poddery.com, codema.in etc. Our funds are managed by non-profit Navodaya Networks as we are not a registered organization.

FSCI's statement on banning of Free Software apps like Element and Briar

Update on 15 May 2023: Several media outlets, rights groups and Free Software projects have published articles based on this writeup to spread the word. The ones we know about are- Scroll.in, Internet Freedom Foundation, The Register, MediaNama, Mountain Valley Kashmir (print version), Tutanota and Indian Pirates. Internet Freedom Foundation has also filed RTI requests to obtain more information.

My adventures with Dino illustrate the importance of Software Freedom

I have Librem 5 phone and I use XMPP for communications. I was using Dino, but a few days ago, I learnt that Dino restricts key sharing to contacts. That means, in encrypted groups, I was not able to decrypt messages sent by people not in my contacts. Other Dino users also reported similar problems. The solution was to add them to my contacts, but that is impractical in a large encrypted group. So, I couldn’t use Dino unless this policy was removed. The other option was Gajim, which did not have support for small screen devices, such as my Librem 5, and Gajim developers were not interested in UI that works on both mobiles and desktop.

My Experience of attending DebConf22 in Kosovo

This blog post was originally published on Ravi’s personal blog and we reposted here for more visibility.

I just came out of what has been one of the most wonderful experiences of my life– DebConf in Kosovo. DebConf is the annual conference of Debian contributors from all around the world. This was my first time attending a DebConf ever, which presented a great opportunity for me to explore different cultures and food, along with making many new friends in the Debian community as it featured 210 attendees from 38 countries.

Prav App Project: Challenging the Monopoly of WhatsApp

PravApp project is a plan to get a lot of people to invest small amounts to run an interoperable messaging service that is easier to join and discover contacts.

FSCI will do an Ask Me Anything on r/India subreddit on 12th April

Update: The AMA ended and you can read it here.

We are invited by the moderators of r/India subreddit to do an Ask Me Anything as a community. Members of r/India community can ask us anything during this Ask Me Anything session. We feel that this is a very good opportunity to interact with people and spread the idea of Free Software and its importance.

How To Create A Channel Interconnected With Telegram, IRC, XMPP, Matrix

(Updated on 08-April-2022 to add screenshots)

Let’s say your friend uses Telegram and wants to join your group on Free Software activism, while your group is on Matrix and the friend needs to download an extra app to join your group. Wouldn’t it be better if users could connect with each other irrespective of the app they use? While we don’t know any such method for encrypted personal chats or private groups as of now, but public groups can be interconnected in such a way that users of Telegram, IRC, Matrix, XMPP, can participate without switching to any other chat protocol. This tutorial is exactly about this.