[off-topic] donation needed to improve accessibility
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I thought I'd point people to a new project that aims to create a distribution focused on improving access to GNU/Linux and free software for peoples with various disabilities:
http://igg.me/p/sonar-project/x/2332188
I believe the person behind this is a well known individual in this community and it is well worth any contribution you can make. He has spoken at various conferences and will be giving a speech at the North East GNU/Linux Fest coming up. He has a very interesting story too that I highly reccomend people read.
I made a $25 donation today. The fund raising effort has hit about 10% of its goal and has a little over two weeks left to go. Lets see if we can get this to 100%!
It doesn't say if he plans for Sonar to be 100% free though.
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>It doesn't say if he plans for Sonar to be 100% free though.
Mr
Mr. Nadeau has worked with Mr. Rodríguez on accessibility in Trisquel in the past. He's also worked as an intern at the FSF, and in the video he says Sonar will be free as in freedom, and he made a point to mention the advantages as to why free software is better than its proprietary alternatives, especially for people who need accessibility:
"Sonar is free as in cost, which is a good thing, but the most important is free as in software freedom... there is proprietary accessible software that does exist, but it's extremely expensive, and there's only a few people able to afford the technology... but the most important is the software freedom. Everyone who uses Sonar will be in control of their own computing, once and for all. They will have destiny in their own hands. They will be able to control the software they depend on, to access their computer, once and for all.
Unlike proprietary software, which tells us when we can use it, how you can use it, how many times you can install it, free software doesn't restrict you in that way, so the people who use Sonar will be able to modify the software to fit their needs. I want to bridge that gap between accessibility and technology."
I will definitely contribute, it looks like a noble and worthy goal.
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I don't think he plans for Sonar to be 100% free. The current releases
are respins of Ubuntu and Debian Testing. I wish he had chosen Trisquel
as his base. Perhaps he decided that building a distro that will work on
more hardware, out of the box, is an acceptable compromise, since it
will make Sonar more immediately available to users of whatever hardware
is on hand when they try it? I confess, if Trisquel were my first
distro, and it didn't happen to work with all my hardware, I'd likely
have given up on GNU/Linux.
Cheers,
Dave
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Le 13-02-04 04:02 PM, name at domain a écrit :
> I thought I'd point people to a new project that aims to create a distribution focused on improving
access to GNU/Linux and free software for peoples with various disabilities:
>
> http://igg.me/p/sonar-project/x/2332188
[...]
I inquired about funding the same work in Debian or Trisquel via
identi.ca, didn't get any answer:
https://identi.ca/notice/99315370
Jonathan was an intern at FSF to implement accessibility in Trisquel 5.5
afterall.
F.
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I am a member!
Jonathan got accessibility into Trisquel 5.0, for which I am grateful!
I was introduced to Trisquel and Jonathan at Software Freedom Day, I
think it was in 2011. I'm thrilled that accessibility continues to be a
priority!
" I inquired about funding the same work in Debian or Trisquel"
Yeah, since he used to help with accessibility in Trisquel, why not
continue doing that? It seems a waste to duplicate effort maintaining
yet another distribution, especially if he was already helping with
accessibility in Trisquel to begin with.
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The big difference is he has control over every aspect of the project if he goes it alone. As good as Trisquel is accessibility wise it probably wouldn't ever achieve the level of accessibility that he envisions in this new distribution.
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If he goes it alone, accessibility could become better than that now
offered by GNOME and the KDE accessibility bridge. I think he plans to
use his foundation to fund accessibility developments and see that they
get into the GNU/Linux ecosystem, not just stay in Sonar.
Sonar is now a Ubuntu remix, but who knows. If GNOME's accessibility
becomes sub-optimal, the Sonar project could attach itself to a fork,
such as Consort.
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Yea-
I'm not terribly concerned with how he uses the funds. It isn't like he is out to hinder free software in any way and whatever is done should only help. He knows the problems, he is concerned, and regardless of what is done I'm sure freedom is at the tip of his mind. You have to start somewhere.
I am a member!
Thank you for mentioning Sonar Project! I'm a monthly donor to the
Accessible Computing Foundation. I also contribute to the Accessible
Freedom wiki, a distribution-independent source for information on
GNU/Linux and accessibility. So far, we have some help pages on getting
started with Trisquel, Ubuntu, Fedora, and Open /Suse, with Orca as the
screen reader and magnifier. Outside the foundation, I promote
GNU/Linux, in general, and Trisquel, in particular, wherever I can;
resistance is strong, within the organized blindness community.
Cheers,
Dave Hunt
Accessible Freedom Wiki: http://www.accessiblefreedom.org/wiki/
Accessible Computing Foundation: http:/theacf.co
Sonar Project: http://sonar-project.org
On 02/04/2013 04:02 PM, name at domain wrote:
> I thought I'd point people to a new project that aims to create a
> distribution focused on improving access to GNU/Linux and free software
> for peoples with various disabilities:
>
> http://igg.me/p/sonar-project/x/2332188
>
> I believe the person behind this is a well known individual in this
> community and it is well worth any contribution you can make. He has
> spoken at various conferences and will be giving a speech at the North
> East GNU/Linux Fest coming up. He has a very interesting story too that
> I highly reccomend people read.
>
> I made a $25 donation today. The fund raising effort has hit about 10%
> of its goal and has a little over two weeks left to go. Lets see if we
> can get this to 100%!
>
Sonar is a waste of time and effort.
Why? There are already too many distros out there and instead of a whole new one to join the crowd, the money he gets should be spent on creating applications or improving the existing ones.
When these applications are polished to his liking, the big push should to get them into the Debian and Fedora repos at first so they trickle down to the most widely used distributions out there.
On top of that, there is uncertainty if this is going to be free or not. If not, he is being selfish and actually taking away valuable tools for those like him who may not have his technical skills or connections.
So he is willing to have free software activists help him out and then turns around and locks down his version of it. Classy guy.
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Where did you get this idea he was locking down the distribution? His whole reason for doing this is the exact opposite of that. Your pulling stuff out of the air again as far as I can see. I'm all for more cooperation although I don't see this benefiting or hurting Trisquel one bit. His goal is noble and it is unlikely Rubén would have the time to focus so heavily on this anyway.
Spending the time to polish a distribution specific to those with more extreme challenges makes sense.
This is similar to Tails. There are enough differences that it really doesn't make sense to integrate the feature set into more common distributions.
He is changing fonts and doing things that may even have a negative impact if done to Trisquel. This is one of the benefits of free software. Not everybody has to use the same software or use the software the same way. I doubt he is doing anything significant other than tailoring the software which already exists to make sure it works and continues working.
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You are right that Jonathan isn't interested in locking anything down.
The accessibility features, found in Sonar, are part of the standard
GNOME feature set. In the typical out-of-the-box GNOME setup, they're
not enabled by default. I find Sonar, in its current state, redundant,
and do not use it; this is an esthetic consideration. To see what
Jonathan has done, so far, try one of the images on http://sonar-project.org
On 13-02-05 12:43 AM, Dave Hunt wrote:
> [...] The accessibility features, found in Sonar, are part of the
> standard GNOME feature set. In the typical out-of-the-box GNOME
> setup, they're not enabled by default. [...
Actually, if it's based on Ubuntu they're part of the standard "Ubuntu's
Gnome" feature set.
That alone is an important problem, I am asking Jonathan about this:
http://identi.ca/conversation/98417068#notice-99424010
F.
--
Fabián Rodríguez
http://trisquel.magicfab.ca
On 13-02-05 03:45 PM, Fabian Rodriguez wrote:
> On 13-02-05 12:43 AM, Dave Hunt wrote:
>> [...] The accessibility features, found in Sonar, are part of the
>> standard GNOME feature set. In the typical out-of-the-box GNOME
>> setup, they're not enabled by default. [...
> Actually, if it's based on Ubuntu they're part of the standard "Ubuntu's
> Gnome" feature set.
>
> That alone is an important problem, I am asking Jonathan about this:
> http://identi.ca/conversation/98417068#notice-99424010
>
So, I stand corrected. Someone else replied on identi.ca and after
visiting the blog, it has different information indicating there are
also Debian versions:
http://www.sonar-project.org/node/12
Nice!
F.
--
Fabián Rodríguez
http://fsf.magicfab.ca
I got my impression about this not being 100% free from the other comments about him being somewhat vague on the complete freedom of the distro. On top of that, he is creating a distro on the standard Ubuntu releases which the FSF and RMS himself do not approve. I don't mind Ubuntu, but I know a lot in the free software camp think it is bad news unless it is cleaned out like Trisquel.
Another issue is if he can sustain the distribution once it is released. Hopefully it isn't another one man team trying to change the world and loses its potential within a year. That is why some of us were saying that it may be better to focus on improving the applications and push them upstream into the main projects like Gnome, KDE, and whatever core set of software that the majority of distributions use.
Once his improvements are available for Fedora/CentOS/RedHat, OpenSuSE, Slackware, Mageia, PCLinuxOS, and Arch in addition to the Debian/Ubuntu/Trisquel crowd, then he has truely did the work he needed to. From there, an option can be made in the install for those who need more accessibilty.
A whole big project just to focus on one aspect that a small amount of users use is unnecessary. Instead he should be in contact with Canonical and Redhat in improving their installers by offering the improved options and make it easy to access once installed.
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Giving people control of certain aspects is really beneficial to moving things along. But besides that it'll probably be a lot easier for him to attracting funding. Particularly from sources that would not otherwise normally donate to a free software project/foundation/etc.
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What is wrong with you t3g?
Of all the GNU/Linux distributions to dismiss, why would any sane person chose to dismiss Sonar?
Sonar is pursuing a niche but very real demographic. Unfortunately, my guess is that most people who need technical accessibility are not aware of the benefits of GNU/Linux, let alone aware of the most well known and established distributions. By creating a dedicated distribution for accessibility, Mr. Nadeau is immediately removing any uncertainty about who the distribution is for. It's all very well and nice to argue that he should just pursue his energies into Debian or RHEL etc, but those distributions don't exist to demand that their users are given the tools needed for universal accessibility.
You could apply your very same criticism for Sonar to Trisquel. Why bother with it? Why not just use a script to clean Ubuntu? Or why not contribute to gNewSense instead, the official FSF sponsored distribution? Why not use Debian with only free repos?
I use Trisquel because it makes freedom its priority, it is well maintained, and offers new users to GNU/Linux a tasteful and aesthetic way to appreciate freedom respecting software. I use it because of the users' common respect for free software, and their regard for technical liberation over convenience.
Similar reasons could well be made for Sonar, in terms of a common need for universal accessibility. Also, I think this criticism is more than disingenuous when this very week, the GNU/Linux community has seen big updates from Descent, Sparky and LinuxLite etc etc, which offer virtually nothing to its users other than a slightly modified DE and wallpapers from their parent distributions.
Sonar is a complete distribution unto itself, compared to these.
>So he is willing to have free software activists help him out and then turns around and locks down his version of it. Classy guy.
I didn't know Sonar was going to be "locked down". Do you have a source? Here, I have one just for you: http://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/strawman
I don't want you to think I am attacking the guy personally, which I am not. As for your reference to Trisquel, it is unique due to it being the first or one of the first of its kind to be based off of Ubuntu. You get the huge community code behind it plus a limitless amount of PPAs.
I originally installed Trisquel 4 due to being one of the best looking distributions out there and then later learned about the libre nature. I still think that Trisquel peaked at version 5 and I look forward to future improvements.
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The humorous part of all this is I'd normally be making the same general comment t3g is making about more collaboration and cooperation. Only this is probably an example of where it makes sense to produce a distribution specific to an audience for various reasons (of which others have expressed even better than my brash example) .
:)
Well if he does pull this off and is a success over time, then hopefully the hard work improving accessibility for Sonar gets pushed upstream to the Debians and the Fedoras and Archs. If it does, then good for him and his hard work wasn't in vain.
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http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/262604?c=activity
He goes on to explain the value of free software for anybody who is questioning his motivation. * this video does depend on non-free software *. Keep in mind the larger audience here is not free software users and indiegogo is a third party funding site which he has no control over.
And you can watch this on youtube via html5:
Remember, Chris, that YouTube always requires nonfree software, namely the nonfree Javascript. To really watch without nonfree software, you need to download the video with something like UnPlug (a Firefox extension which I really recommend for this; it's really easy, and you can also stream the videos with it by opening the video file instead of saving it).
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I thought greasemonkey and linternamagica were free software? They're a
browser extension and user script, respectively.
-Dave
On 02/07/2013 12:35 PM, name at domain wrote:
> Remember, Chris, that YouTube always requires nonfree software, namely
> the nonfree Javascript. To really watch without nonfree software, you
> need to download the video with something like UnPlug (a Firefox
> extension which I really recommend for this; it's really easy, and you
> can also stream the videos with it by opening the video file instead of
> saving it).
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Thanks for pointing that out. I did forget and am pretty sure I read this from your or others here before.
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Given my recent experience with unplug and youtube, I cannot second this
recommendation. In most attempts to stream a video, I get a maximum of
10 seconds of playback, then it just stops. There's a browser tab open,
with nothing but 'videoplayback' as an 'mp4' video object.
Cheers,
Dave
On 02/07/2013 12:35 PM, name at domain wrote:
> Remember, Chris, that YouTube always requires nonfree software, namely
> the nonfree Javascript.To really watch without nonfree software, you
> need to download the video with something like UnPlug (a Firefox
> extension which I really recommend for this; it's really easy, and you
> can also stream the videos with it by opening the video file instead of
> saving it).
I've had a perfectly fine experience with Abrowser 18. Perhaps it was just buffering? Note that you will get better loading times if you choose the "normal" quality instead of the highest quality.
He is well spoken does make a lot of good points about the need for these tools to be free software. He does bring to light another problem where a software company develops a piece of software, gets selfish by charging like $10,000 per license, and therefore is out of the reach of the average consumer. That software company justifies it by selling to a government organization that somehow gets convinced they need it and buy these licenses with tax payer money.
This way of software development needs to stop because it takes advantage of others. It may be true that this software can be avoided or simply pirated, but if no free alternatives exist, the potential user is screwed.
Some also say that the mentality of selling software is on its way out as things are moved to the cloud and the industry moves to a software as a service model instead. Will this help others or will we have to deal with $10,000 license fees in a new model?
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I'm not sure the old model generally supported $10,000 license fees. At least not in USD dollars. Though the new subscription model certainly seems to think they can get away with it. Not quite sure how that is going to work. I'm guessing Microsoft will probably discount the subscription for business users and provide no-cost option for employees or something similar initially. Once it hits market dominance they will simply discontinue the discount.
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If anybody was holding off on donating to the Sonar Project its down to 30 hours to go!
The project has reached near half its funding goal of just $20,000 USD.
Consider a donation and make this project a reality.
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