Blog

Invitation for Webinar on June 13: Better Than Zoom and Google Meet

Hi all,

We are going to conduct a webinar to discuss video conferencing solutions (specifically Jitsi Meet).

Now, you may ask isn’t a webinar an overkill??

FSCI challenges new Intermediary Rules, 2021, in the High Court of Kerala

FSCI has challenged Part II of the Intermediary Rules, 2021 with the help of SFLC India to declare these rules as unconstitutional. The analysis by SFLC India and IFF show us how far-reaching the impact these rules have on our right to privacy and freedom of speech and expression. As a community providing communication services to the general public, FSCI is directly affected by these rules. Our ability to provide privacy-respecting services to the public is affected. We are also forced to censor people’s free speech or be liable for the user generated content we host. The petition has been admitted by Kerala High Court and is pending for hearing.

FSCI Position Statement on the Controversies Surrounding Richard M Stallman's Reinstatement to the Board of FSF

FSCI is a community of contributors to the free software movement from India.

At FSCI we value software freedom because it is ultimately about user freedom. And we believe that inherent in this value is the spirit of inclusion and diversity. Everyone should have the freedom to use software, especially those who need it the most.

FSCI Jitsi Meet Crowdfunding Campaign

After the Covid-19 pandemic, we’re having our virtual meets via the internet and the need to communicate has only increased.

Currently, most one on one personal chats and group meetings are conducted using “free = gratis” proprietary services like WhatsApp, Google Meet, Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Skype, etc. which collect and aggregate digital data and metadata.

Reclaim privacy in instant messaging with Free Software and choice of service providers

Free Software Foundation of India released a comparison of different messaging apps and services a few weeks ago. When compared to centralized services like WhatsApp and Telegram, services like Matrix and XMPP which respects users’ freedom (as a user or as a community) and does not lead to vendor lock-in are better according to FSF India. This is because Matrix and XMPP are open protocols that allow federation and have free software implementations to run on servers and clients.

Free Software Camp 2020 Launches on Software Freedom Day

The world celebrates Software Freedom Day today with the aim of increasing awareness of Free Software and its virtues, and it is in the same spirit and excitement that we announce today the Free Software Camp. The Free Software Camp is an online mentorship camp on free software organized by Free Software Foundation of India and Free Software Community of India.

Setup Private Dns With Open Nic Servers

Recently many ISPs blocked DuckDuckGo.com at DNS level making the privacy focused search engine unavailable for many Internet users in India. DNS or Domain Name Service is like an address book for the internet used by all internet connected apps like your Web Browser or Instant Messaging app. A name server (a server running a DNS service) returns the Internet Protocol (IP) address for any registered domain names to any application requesting it. For example, duckduckgo.com has address 40.81.94.43.

Response to ICFOSS Director, Sabarish K's requests to community.

On July 15th evening 7pm, the new ICFOSS director Sabarish K had a discussion on the concerns about ICFOSS presented by Free Software communities. The responses by ICFOSS Director are collected by Akshay and are given here.

Open Letter to KITE CEO on Forcing Teachers Students and Parents to Use WhatsApp

Introduction

This is an open letter to Kerala Infrastructure and Technology for Education (KITE - https://kite.kerala.gov.in/) CEO from Free Software Community of India (FSCI - https://fsci.in). We are writing to bring into your attention some issues regarding the ongoing online learning programme ‘First Bell’ and some possible solutions. Since our group focus on Free Software related issues, we are limiting our comment to Free Software aspect of the programme only.

Statement on Arogya Setu Source Code Release under Apache License

Background:

In a country where there is a stated policy on adoption of Free Software (sometimes called as open source), it is rather surprising that a public application supported, promoted, and partially mandated by the government is not Free Software from the very inception. While the server side source code still remains undisclosed and several unresolved technical questions exist including about reproducibility of builds (to verify the application distributed via Google’s play store is really built from the source code published) and whether penetration testing is acceptable, we use the attention brought on transparency to raise larger issues about Aarogya Setu application and government’s use of technology in handling the most dreadful pandemic of our times.