Gianluca Varisco

The Free Software Foundation published in its Community blog the 5 real reasons to avoid iPhone 3G:

• iPhone completely blocks free software. Developers must pay a tax to Apple, who becomes the sole authority over what can and can’t be on everyone’s phones.
• iPhone endorses and supports Digital Restrictions Management (DRM) technology.
• iPhone exposes your whereabouts and provides ways for others to track you without your knowledge.
• iPhone won’t play patent- and DRM-free formats like Ogg Vorbis and Theora.
• iPhone is not the only option. There are better alternatives on the horizon that respect your freedom, don’t spy on you, play free media formats, and let you use free software — like the FreeRunner.

At the beginning, I thought about buying for myself an iPhone 3G (launched today in Italy), but due to its high costs (especially for the version without a long-term contract) I’d probably end to disassembly it as the iFixIt guys did yesterday ;-).

Last but not least, I’m totally in agree with FSFE: it’s not a news that Apple doesn’t care about its customers and their rights (WTF is privacy?).

Yesterday I entirely spent the morning at Novell offices in Sesto S. Giovanni (Milan, Italy) for their Web 2.0 Tour called “Collaboration Tour“.

Organized by Alessandra Vidili (Workgroup Sales Specialist in Novell), the event has also seen the partecipation of two of their Italian partners:

• Ounet Sistemi
• MSD Systems

Main topic of the event was their Collaboration Suite, made up of different components and products: GroupWise, Open Enterprise Server, Open Workgroup Suite, Teaming + Conferencing.

What I liked more is, without doubts, their Teaming + Conferencing solution based on ICECore technology: features such as Web and Voice Conferencing, Personal and Team Workspaces, Application and Desktop Sharing are really needed, nowadays, in an Enterprise environment.

Thanks Novell for have decided, at the end, to accept me as attendee

Some weeks ago I submitted a talk to Open Source World Conference 2008. It will be held in Malaga on October 20-22, 2008. Yesterday I received this e-mail from OSWC08’s Technical Secretariat:

Dear participant,

Thank you for submitting your proposal ‘Enhance your experience with the Fedora Project‘ to the Call for Papers of the Open Source World Conference 08 (OSWC08). A Technical Committee of experts is now revising the numerous submissions we have received.

Due to the dateline extension for the Call for Papers we have also delayed the evaluation of the proposals. You will get an e-mail on Tuesday 29 of July informing you of the Committee´s decision regarding your submission.

Thank you very much for your efforts.

Pray for me, guys

While I was reading this article, I found that paragraph very interesting:

Asimismo, se han recibido propuestas procedentes de distintos países, desde Estados Unidos a Italia, y de todos los sectores, el universitario, empresarial, de desarrolladores free-lance…

Am I the only one from ‘Italy’ or there’re few other italian guys that submitted a talk? If yes, drop me an e-mail, and we could plan to reach Malaga all together