This week I've been thrilled to be in Berlin for Kamailio World 2017, one of the highlights of the SIP, VoIP and telephony enthusiast's calendar. It is an event that reaches far beyond Kamailio and is well attended by leaders of many of the well known free software projects in this space. HOMER 6 is coming Alexandr Dubovikov gave me a sneak peek of the new version of the HOMER SIP capture framework for gathering, storing and analyzing messages in a SIP network. Visiting the FSFE team in Berlin Having recently joined the FSFE's General Assembly as the fellowship representative, I've been keen to get to know more about the organization. My visit to the FSFE office involved a wide-ranging discussion with Erik Albers about the fellowship program and FSFE in general. Steak and SDR night After a hard day of SIP hacking and a long afternoon at Kamailio World's open bar, a developer needs a decent meal and something previously unseen to hack on. A group of us settled at Escados, Alexanderplatz where my SDR kit emerged from my bag and other Debian users found out how easy it is to apt install the packages, attach the dongle and explore the radio spectrum. Next stop OSCAL'17, Tirana Having left Berlin, I'm now in Tirana, Albania where I'll give an SDR workshop and Free-RTC talk at OSCAL'17. The weather forecast is between 26 - 28 degrees celsius, the food is great and the weekend's schedule is full of interesting talks and workshops. The organizing team have already made me feel very welcome here, meeting me at the airport and leaving a very generous basket of gifts in my hotel room. OSCAL has emerged as a significant annual event in the free software world and if it's too late for you to come this year, don't miss it in 2018.

This week I'm visiting Kamailio World (8-10 May, Berlin) and OSCAL'17 (13-14 May, Tirana). Kamailio World Kamailio World features a range of talks about developing and using SIP and telephony applications and offers many opportunities for SIP developers, WebRTC developers, network operators and users to interact. Wednesday, at midday, there is a Dangerous Demos session where cutting edge innovations will make their first (and potentially last) appearance. OSCAL'17, Tirana OSCAL'17 is an event that has grown dramatically in recent years and is expecting hundreds of free software users and developers, including many international guests, to converge on Tirana, Albania this weekend. On Saturday I'll be giving a workshop about the Debian Hams project and Software Defined Radio. On Sunday I'll give a talk about Free Real-time Communications (RTC) and the alternatives to systems like Skype, Whatsapp, Viber and Facebook.

The Free Software Foundation of Europe has just completed the process of electing a new fellowship representative to the General Assembly (GA) and I was surprised to find that out of seven very deserving candidates, members of the fellowship have selected me to represent them on the GA. I'd like to thank all those who voted, the other candidates and Erik Albers for his efforts to administer this annual process. Please consider becoming an FSFE fellow or donor The FSFE runs on the support of both volunteers and financial donors, including organizations and individual members of the fellowship program. The fellowship program is not about money alone, it is an opportunity to become more aware of and involved in the debate about technology's impact on society, for better or worse. Developers, users and any other supporters of the organization's mission are welcome to join, here is the form. You don't need to be a fellow or pay any money to be an active part of the free software community and FSFE events generally don't exclude non-members, nonetheless, becoming a fellow gives you a stronger voice in processes such as this annual election. Attending OSCAL'17, Tirana During the election period, I promised to keep on doing the things I already do: volunteering, public speaking, mentoring, blogging and developing innovative new code. During May I hope to attend several events, including OSCAL'17 in Tirana, Albania on 13-14 May. I'll be running a workshop there on the Debian Hams blend and Software Defined Radio. Please come along and encourage other people you know in the region to consider attending. What is your view on the Fellowship and FSFE structure? Several candidates made comments about the Fellowship program and the way individual members and volunteers are involved in FSFE governance. This is not a new topic. Debate about this topic is very welcome and I would be particularly interested to hear any concerns or ideas for improvement that people may contribute. One of the best places to share these ideas would be through the FSFE's discussion list. In any case, the fellowship representative can not single-handedly overhaul the organization. I hope to be a constructive part of the team and that whenever my term comes to an end, the organization and the free software community in general will be stronger and happier in some way.

Jonas berg has recently blogged about Using Proprietary Software for Freedom. He argues that it can be acceptable to use proprietary software to further free and open source software ambitions if that is indeed the purpose. Jonas' blog suggests that each time proprietary software is used, the relative risk and reward should be considered and there may be situations where the reward is big enough and the risk low enough that proprietary software can be used. A question of leadership Many of the free software users and developers I've spoken to express frustration about how difficult it is to communicate to their family and friends about the risks of proprietary software. A typical example is explaining to family members why you would never install Skype. Imagine a doctor who gives a talk to school children about the dangers of smoking and is then spotted having a fag at the bus stop. After a month, if you ask the children what they remember about that doctor, is it more likely to be what he said or what he did? When contemplating Jonas' words, it is important to consider this leadership factor as a significant risk every time proprietary software or services are used. Getting busted with just one piece of proprietary software undermines your own credibility and posture now and well into the future. Research has shown that when communicating with people, what they see and how you communicate is ninety three percent of the impression you make. What you actually say to them is only seven percent. When giving a talk at a conference or a demo to a client, or communicating with family members in our everyday lives, using a proprietary application or a product or service that is obviously proprietary like an iPhone or Facebook will have far more impact than the words you say. It is not only a question of what you are seen doing in public: somebody who lives happily and comfortably without using proprietary software sounds a lot more credible than somebody who tries to explain freedom without living it. The many faces of proprietary software One of the first things to consider is that even for those developers who have a completely free operating system, there may well be some proprietary code lurking in their BIOS or other parts of their hardware. Their mobile phone, their car, their oven and even their alarm clock are all likely to contain some proprietary code too. The risks associated with these technologies may well be quite minimal, at least until that alarm clock becomes part of the Internet of Things and can be hacked by the bored teenager next door. Accessing most web sites these days inevitably involves some interaction with proprietary software, even if it is not running on your own computer. There is no need to give up Some people may consider this state of affairs and simply give up, using whatever appears to be the easiest solution for each problem at hand without thinking too much about whether it is proprietary or not. I don't think Jonas' blog intended to sanction this level of complacency. Every time you come across a piece of software, it is worth considering whether a free alternative exists and whether the software is really needed at all. An orderly migration to free software In our professional context, most software developers come across proprietary software every day in the networks operated by our employers and their clients. Sometimes we have the opportunity to influence the future of these systems. There are many cases where telling the client to go cold-turkey on their proprietary software would simply lead to the client choosing to get advice from somebody else. The free software engineer who looks at the situation strategically may find that it is possible to continue using the proprietary software as part of a staged migration, gradually helping the user to reduce their exposure over a period of months or even a few years. This may be one of the scenarios where Jonas is sanctioning the use of proprietary software. On a technical level, it may be possible to show the client that we are concerned about the dangers but that we also want to ensure the continuity of their business. We may propose a solution that involves sandboxing the proprietary software in a virtual machine or a DMZ to prevent it from compromising other systems or "calling home" to the vendor. As well as technical concerns about a sudden migration, promoters of free software frequently encounter political issues as well. For example, the IT manager in a company may be five years from retirement and is not concerned about his employer's long term ability to extricate itself from a web of Microsoft licenses after he or she has the freedom to go fishing every day. The free software professional may need to invest significant time winning the trust of senior management before he is able to work around a belligerant IT manager like this. No deal is better than a bad deal People in the UK have probably encountered the expression "No deal is better than a bad deal" many times already in the last few weeks. Please excuse me for borrowing it. If there is no free software alternative to a particular piece of proprietary software, maybe it is better to simply do without it. Facebook is a great example of this principle: life without social media is great and rather than trying to find or create a free alternative, why not just do something in the real world, like riding motorcycles, reading books or getting a cat or dog? Burning bridges behind you For those who are keen to be the visionaries and leaders in a world where free software is the dominant paradigm, would you really feel satisfied if you got there on the back of proprietary solutions? Or are you concerned that taking such shortcuts is only going to put that vision further out of reach? Each time you solve a problem with free software, whether it is small or large, in your personal life or in your business, the process you went through strengthens you to solve bigger problems the same way. Each time you solve a problem using a proprietary solution, not only do you miss out on that process of discovery but you also risk conditioning yourself to be dependent in future. For those who hope to build a successful startup company or be part of one, how would you feel if you reach your goal and then the rug is pulled out underneath you when a proprietary software vendor or cloud service you depend on changes the rules? Personally, in my own life, I prefer to avoid and weed out proprietary solutions wherever I can and force myself to either make free solutions work or do without them. Using proprietary software and services is living your life like a rat in a maze, where the oligarchs in Silicon Valley can move the walls around as they see fit.

Alan Turing's name and his work are well known to anybody with a theoretical grounding in computer science. Turing developed his theories well before anybody invented file sharing, overclocking or mass surveillance. In fact, Turing was largely working in the absence of any computers at all: the transistor was only invented in 1947 and the microchip, the critical innovation that has made computing both affordable and portable, only came in 1960, four years after Turing's death. To this day, the Turing Test remains a well known challenge in the field of Artificial Intelligence. The most prestigious prize in computing, the A.M. Turing Award from the ACM, equivalent to the Nobel Prize in other fields of endeavour, is named in Turing's honour. (This year's award is another British scientist, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web).
Potentially far more people know of Alan Turing for his groundbreaking work at Bletchley Park and the impact it had on cracking the Nazi's Enigma machines during World War 2, giving the allies an advantage against Hitler. While in his lifetime, Turing exposed the secret communications of the Nazis, in his death, he exposed something manifestly repugnant about his own society. Turing's challenges with his sexuality (or Britain's challenge with it) are just as well documented as his greatest scientific achievements. The 2014 movie The Imitation Game tells Turing's story, bringing together the themes from his professional and personal life. Had Turing chosen to flee British persecution by going abroad, he would be a refugee in the same sense as any person who crossed the seas to reach Europe today to avoid persecution elsewhere. Please prove me wrong In March, I blogged about the problem of racism that plagues Britain today. While some may have felt the tone of the blog was quite strong, I was in no way pleased to find my position affirmed by the events that occurred in the two days after the blog appeared. Two days and two more human beings (both immigrants and both refugees) subjected to abhorrent and unnecessary acts of abuse in Great Britain. Both cases appear to be fuelled directly by the evil that has been oozing out of number 10 Downing Street since they decided to have a referendum on "Brexit". What stands out about these latest crimes is not that they occurred (this type of thing has been going on for months now) but certain contrasts between their circumstances and to a lesser extent, the fact they occurred immediately after Theresa May formalized Britain's departure from the EU. One of the victims was almost beaten to death by a street gang, while the other was abused by men wearing uniforms. One was only a child, while the other is a mature adult who has been in the UK almost three decades, completely assimilated into British life, working and paying taxes. Both were doing nothing out of the ordinary at the time the abuse occurred: one had engaged in a conversation at a bus stop, the other was on a routine visit to a Government office. There is no evidence that either of them had done anything to provoke or invite the abhorrent treatment meted out to them by the followers of Theresa May and Nigel Farage. The first victim, on 30 March, was Stojan Jankovic, a refugee from Yugoslavia who has been in the UK for 26 years. He had a routine meeting at an immigration department office where he was ambushed, thrown in the back of a van and sent to rot in a prison cell by Theresa May's gestapo. On Friday, 31 March, it was Reker Ahmed, a 17 year old Kurdish-Iranian beaten to the brink of death by a crowd in south London. One of the more remarkable facts to emerge about these two cases is that while Stojan Jankovic was basically locked up for no reason at all, the street thugs who the police apprehended for the assault on Ahmed were kept in a cell for less than 48 hours and released again on bail. While the harmless and innocent Jankovic was eventually released after a massive public outcry, he spent more time locked up than that gang of violent criminals who beat Reker Ahmed. In other words, Theresa May and Nigel Farage's Britain has more concern for the liberty of violent criminals than somebody like Jankovic who has been working and paying taxes in the UK since before any of those street thugs were born. A deeper insight into Turing's fate With gay marriage having been legal in the UK for a number of years now, the rainbow flag flying at the Tate and Sir Elton John achieving a knighthood, it becomes difficult for people to relate to the world in which Turing and many other victims were collectively classified by their sexuality, systematically persecuted by the state and ultimately died far sooner than they should have. (Turing was only 41 when he died). In fact, the cruel and brutal forces that ripped Turing apart (and countless other victims too) haven't dissipated at all, they have simply shifted their target. The slanderous comments insinuating that immigrants "steal" jobs or that Islam is about terrorism are eerily reminiscent of suggestions that gay men abduct young boys or work as Soviet spies. None of these lies has any basis in fact, but repeat them often enough in certain types of newspaper and these ideas spread like weeds. In an ironic twist, Turing's groundbreaking work at Bletchley Park was founded on the contributions of Polish mathematicians, their own country having been the first casualty to Hitler, they were also both immigrants and refugees in Britain. Today, under the Theresa May/Nigel Farage leadership, Polish citizens have been subjected to regular vilification by the media and some have even been killed in the street. It is said that a picture is worth a thousand words. When you compare these two pieces of propaganda: a 1963 article in the Sunday Mirror advising people "How to spot a possible homo" and a UK Government billboard encouraging people to be on the lookout for people who look different, could you imagine the same type of small-minded and power-hungry tyrants crafting them, singling out a minority so as to keep the public's attention in the wrong place?
Many people have noticed that these latest UK Government posters portray foreigners, Muslims and basically anybody who is not white using a range of characteristics found in anti-semetic propaganda from the Third Reich: Do the people who create such propaganda appear to have any concern whatsoever for the people they hurt? How would Alan Turing have felt when he encountered propaganda like that from the Sunday Mirror? Do posters like these encourage us to judge people by their gifts in science, the arts or sporting prowess or do they encourage us to lump them all together based on their physical appearance? It is a basic expectation of scientific methodology that when you repeat the same experiment, you should get the same result. What type of experiment are Theresa May and Nigel Farage conducting and what type of result would you expect? Playing ping-pong with children If anybody has any doubt that this evil comes from the top, take a moment to contemplate the 3,000 children who were baited with the promise of resettlement from the Calais "jungle" camp into the UK under the Dubs amendment. When French authorities closed the "jungle" in 2016, the children were lured out of the camp and left with nowhere to go as Theresa May and French authorities played ping-pong with them. Given that the UK parliament had already agreed they should be accepted, was there any reason for Theresa May to dig her heels in and make these children suffer? Or was she just trying to prove her credentials as somebody who can bastardize migrants just the way Nigel Farage would do it? How do British politicians really view migrants? Parliamentarian Keith Vaz, former chair of the Home Affairs Select Committee (responsible for security, crime, prostitution and similar things) was exposed with young men from eastern Europe, encouraging them to take drugs before he ordered them "Take your shirt off. I'm going to attack you.". How many British MP's see foreigners this way? Next time you are groped at an airport security checkpoint, remember it was people like Keith Vaz and his committee who oversee those abuses, writing among other things that "The wider introduction of full-body scanners is a welcome development". No need to "take your shirt off" when these machines can look through it as easily as they can look through your children's underwear. According to the World Health Organization, HIV/AIDS kills as many people as the September 11 attacks every single day. Keith Vaz apparently had no concern for the possibility he might spread this disease any further: the media reported he doesn't use any protection in his extra-marital relationships. While Britain's new management continue to round up foreigners like Stojan Jankovic who have done nothing wrong, they chose not to prosecute Keith Vaz for his antics with drugs and prostitution. Who is Britain's next Alan Turing? Britain's next Alan Turing may not be a homosexual. He or she may have been a child turned away by Theresa May's spat with the French at Calais, a migrant bundled into a deportation van by the gestapo (who are just following orders) or perhaps somebody of Muslim appearance who is set upon by thugs in the street who have been energized by Nigel Farage. If you still have any uncertainty about what Brexit really means, this is it. A country that denies itself the opportunity to be great by subjecting itself to be ruled under the "divide and conquer" mantra of the colonial era. Throughout the centuries, Britain has produced some of the most brilliant scientists of their time. Newton, Darwin and Hawking are just some of those who are even more prominent than Turing, household names around the world. One can only wonder what the history books will have to say about Theresa May and Nigel Farage however. Next time you see a British policeman accosting a Muslim, whether it is at an airport, in a shopping centre, keeping Manchester United souvenirs or simply taking a photograph, spare a thought for Alan Turing and the era when homosexuals were their target of choice.

Since the EU referendum got under way in the UK, it has become almost an everyday occurence to turn on the TV and hear some politician explaining "I don't mean to sound racist, but..." (example) Of course, if you didn't mean to sound racist, you wouldn't sound racist in the first place, now would you? The reality is, whether you like politics or not, political leaders have a significant impact on society and the massive rise in UK hate crimes, including deaths of Polish workers, is a direct reflection of the leadership (or profound lack of it) coming down from Westminster. Maybe you don't mean to sound racist, but if this is the impact your words are having, maybe it's time to shut up? Choosing your referendum Why choose to have a referendum on immigration issues and not on any number of other significant topics? Why not have a referendum on nuking Mr Putin to punish him for what looks like an act of terrorism against the Malaysian Airlines flight MH17? Why not have a referendum on cutting taxes or raising speed limits, turning British motorways into freeways or an autobahn? Why choose to keep those issues in the hands of the Government, but invite the man-in-a-white-van from middle England to regurgitate Nigel Farage's fears and anxieties about migrants onto a ballot paper? Even if David Cameron sincerely hoped and believed that the referendum would turn out otherwise, surely he must have contemplated that he was playing Russian Roulette with the future of millions of innocent people? Let's start at the top For those who are fortunate enough to live in parts of the world where the press provides little exposure to the antics of British royalty, an interesting fact you may have missed is that the Queen's husband, Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh is actually a foreigner. He was born in Greece and has Danish and German ancestry. Migration (in both directions) is right at the heart of the UK's identity. Home office minister Amber Rudd recently suggested British firms should publish details about how many foreign people they employ and in which positions. She argued this is necessary to help boost funding for training local people. If that is such a brilliant idea, why hasn't it worked for the Premier League? It is a matter of public knowledge how many foreigners play football in England's most prestigious division, so why hasn't this caused local clubs to boost training budgets for local recruits? After all, when you consider that England hasn't won a World Cup since 1966, what have they got to lose? All this racism, it's just not cricket. Or is it? One of the most remarkable cricketers to play for England in recent times, Kevin Pietersen, dubbed "the most complete batsman in cricket" by The Times and "England's greatest modern batsman" by the Guardian, was born in South Africa. In the five years he was contracted to the Hampshire county team, he only played one match, because he was too busy representing England abroad. His highest position was nothing less than becoming England's team captain. Are the British superior to every other European citizen? One of the implications of the rhetoric coming out of London these days is that the British are superior to their neighbours, entitled to have their cake and eat it too, making foreigners queue up at Paris' Gare du Nord to board the Eurostar while British travelers should be able to walk or drive into European countries unchallenged. This superiority complex is not uniquely British, you can observe similar delusions are rampant in many of the places where I've lived, including Australia, Switzerland and France. America's Donald Trump has taken this style of politics to a new level. Look in the mirror Theresa May: after British 10-year old schoolboys Robert Thompson and Jon Venables abducted, tortured, murdered and mutilated 2 year old James Bulger in 1993, why not have all British schoolchildren fingerprinted and added to the police DNA database? Why should "security" only apply based on the country where people are born, their religion or skin colour? In fact, after Brexit, people like Venables and Thompson will remain in Britain while a Dutch woman, educated at Cambridge and with two British children will not. If that isn't racism, what is? Running foreigner's off the roads Theresa May has only been Prime Minister for less than a year but she has a history of bullying and abusing foreigners in her previous role in the Home Office. One example of this was a policy of removing driving licenses from foreigners, which has caused administrative chaos and even taken away the licenses of many people who technically should not have been subject to these regulations anyway. Shouldn't the DVLA (Britain's office for driving licenses) simply focus on the competence of somebody to drive a vehicle? Bringing all these other factors into licensing creates a hostile environment full of mistakes and inconvenience at best and opportunities for low-level officials to engage in arbitrary acts of racism and discrimination. Of course, when you are taking your country on the road to nowhere, who needs a driving license anyway? What does "maximum control" over other human beings mean to you? The new British PM has said she wants "maximum control" over immigrants. What exactly does "maximum control" mean? Donald Trump appears to be promising "maximum control" over Muslims, Hitler sought "maximum control" over the Jews, hasn't the whole point of the EU been to avoid similar situations from ever arising again? This talk of "maximum control" in British politics has grown like a weed out of the UKIP. One of their senior figures has been linked to kidnappings and extortion, which reveals a lot about the character of the people who want to devise and administer these policies. Similar people in Australia aspire to jobs in the immigration department where they can extort money out of people for getting them pushed up the queue. It is no surprise that the first member of Australia's parliament ever sent to jail was put there for obtaining bribes and sexual favours from immigrants. When Nigel Farage talks about copying the Australian immigration system, he is talking about creating jobs like these for his mates. Even if "maximum control" is important, who really believes that a bunch of bullies in Westminster should have the power to exercise that control? Is May saying that British bosses are no longer competent to make their own decisions about who to employ or that British citizens are not reliable enough to make their own decisions about who they marry and they need a helping hand from paper-pushers in the immigration department? Echoes of the Third Reich Most people associate acts of mass murder with the Germans who lived in the time of Adolf Hitler. These are the stories told over and and over again in movies, books and the press. Look more closely, however, and it appears that the vast majority of Germans were not in immediate contact with the gas chambers. Even Gobels' secretary writes that she was completely oblivious to it all. Many people were simply small cogs in a big bad machine. The clues were there, but many of them couldn't see the big picture. Even if they did get a whiff of it, many chose not to ask questions, to carry on with their comfortable lives. Today, with mass media and the Internet, it is a lot easier for people to discover the truth if they look, but many are still reluctant to do so. Consider, for example, the fingerprint scanners installed in British post offices and police stations to fingerprint foreigners and criminals (as if they have something in common). If all the post office staff refused to engage in racist conduct the fingerprint scanners would be put out of service. Nonetheless, these people carry on, just doing their job, just following orders. It was through many small abuses like this, rather than mass murder on every street corner, that Hitler motivated an entire nation to serve his evil purposes. Technology like this is introduced in small steps: first it was used for serious criminals, then anybody accused of a crime, then people from Africa and next it appears they will try and apply it to all EU citizens remaining in the UK. How will a British man married to a French woman explain to their children that mummy has to be fingerprinted by the border guard each time they return from vacation? The Nazis pioneered biometric technology with the tracking numbers branded onto Jews. While today's technology is electronic and digital, isn't it performing the same function? There is no middle ground between "soft" and "hard" brexit An important point for British citizens and foreigners in the UK to consider today is that there is no compromise between a "soft" Brexit and a "hard" Brexit. It is one or the other. Anything less (for example, a deal that is "better" for British companies and worse for EU citizens) would imply that the British are a superior species and it is impossible to imagine the EU putting their stamp on such a deal. Anybody from the EU who is trying to make a life in the UK now is playing a game of Russian Roulette - sure, everything might be fine if it morphs into "soft" Brexit, but if Theresa May has her way, at some point in your life, maybe 20 years down the track, you could be rounded up by the gestapo and thrown behind bars for a parking violation. There has already been a five-fold increase in the detention of EU citizens in British concentration camps and they are using grandmothers from Asian countries to refine their tactics for the efficient removal of EU citizens. One can only wonder what type of monsters Theresa May has been employing to run such inhumane operations. This is not politics Edmund Burke's quote "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing" comes to mind on a day like today. Too many people think it is just politics and they can go on with their lives and ignore it. Barely half the British population voted in the referendum. This is about human beings treating each other with dignity and respect. Anything less is abhorrent and may well come back to bite.

This weekend I'm going to FOSDEM, one of the largest gatherings of free software developers in the world. It is an extraordinary event, also preceded by the XSF / XMPP Summit For those who haven't been to FOSDEM before and haven't yet made travel plans, it is not too late. FOSDEM is a free event and no registration is required. Many Brussels hotels don't get a lot of bookings on weekends during the winter so there are plenty of last minute offers available, often cheaper than what is available on AirBNB. I was speaking to somebody in London on Sunday who commutes through St Pancras (the Eurostar terminal) every day and didn't realize it goes to Brussels and only takes 2 hours to get there. One year I booked a mini-van at the last minute and made the drive from the UK with a stop in Lille for dinner on the way back, for 5 people that was a lot cheaper than the train. In other years I've taken trains from Switzerland through Paris or Luxembourg. Real-time Communication (RTC) dev-room on Saturday, 4 February On Saturday, we have a series of 23 talks about RTC topics in the RTC dev-room, including SIP, XMPP, WebRTC, peer-to-peer (with Ring) and presentations from previous GSoC students and developers coming from far and wide. The possibilities of RTC with free software will also be demonstrated and discussed at the RTC lounge in the K building, near the dev-room, over both Saturday and Sunday. Please come and say hello. Please come and subscribe to the Free-RTC-Announce mailing list for important announcements on the RTC theme and join the Free-RTC discussion list if you have any questions about the activities at FOSDEM, dinners for RTC developers on Saturday night or RTC in general. Software Defined Radio (SDR) and the Debian Hams project At 11:30 on Saturday I'll be over at the SDR dev-room to meet other developers of SDR projects such as GNU Radio and give a brief talk about the Debian Hams project and the relationship between our diverse communities. Debian Hams (also on the Debian Ham wiki) provides a ready-to-run solution for ham radio and SDR is just one of its many capabilities. If you've ever wondered about trying the RTL-SDR dongle or similar projects Debian Hams provides a great way to get started quickly. I've previously given talks on this topic at the Vienna and Cambridge mini-DebConfs (video). Ham Radio (also known as amateur radio) offers the possibility to gain exposure to every aspect of technology from the physical antennas and power systems through to software for a range of analog and digital communications purposes. Ham Radio and the huge community around it is a great fit with the principles and philosophy of free software development. In a world where hardware vendors are constantly exploring ways to limit their users with closed and proprietary architectures, such as DRM, a broad-based awareness of the entire technology stack empowers society to remain in control of the technology we are increasingly coming to depend on in our every day lives.

Many people have been scratching their heads wondering what the new US president will really do and what he really stands for. His alternating positions on abortion, for example, suggest he may simply be telling people what he thinks is most likely to win public support from one day to the next. Will he really waste billions of dollars building a wall? Will Muslims really be banned from the US? As it turns out, several movies provide a thought-provoking insight into what could eventuate. What's more, these two have a creepy resemblance to the Trump phenomenon and many of the problems in the world today. Countdown to Looking Glass On the classic cold war theme of nuclear annihilation, Countdown to Looking Glass is probably far more scary to watch on Trump eve than in the era when it was made. Released in 1984, the movie follows a series of international crises that have all come to pass: the assassination of a US ambassador in the middle east, a banking crisis and two superpowers in an escalating conflict over territory. The movie even picked a young Republican congressman for a cameo role: he subsequently went on to become speaker of the house. To relate it to modern times, you may need to imagine it is China, not Russia, who is the adversary but then you probably won't be able to sleep after watching it. The Omen Another classic is The Omen. The star of this series of four horror movies, Damien Thorn, appears to have a history that is eerily reminiscent of Trump: born into a wealthy family, a series of disasters befall every honest person he comes into contact with, he comes to control a vast business empire acquired by inheritance and as he enters the world of politics in the third movie of the series, there is a scene in the Oval Office where he is flippantly advised that he shouldn't lose any sleep over any conflict of interest arising from his business holdings. Did you notice Damien Thorn and Donald Trump even share the same initials, DT?

There are more and more devices around the home (and in many small offices) running a GNU/Linux-based firmware. Consider routers, entry-level NAS appliances, smart phones and home entertainment boxes. More and more people are coming to realize that there is a lack of security updates for these devices and a big risk that the proprietary parts of the code are either very badly engineered (if you don't plan to release your code, why code it properly?) or deliberately includes spyware that calls home to the vendor, ISP or other third parties. IoT botnet incidents, which are becoming more widely publicized, emphasize some of these risks. On top of this is the frustration of trying to become familiar with numerous different web interfaces (for your own devices and those of any friends and family members you give assistance to) and the fact that many of these devices have very limited feature sets. Many people hail OpenWRT as an example of a free alternative (for routers), but I recently discovered that OpenWRT's web interface won't let me enable both DHCP and DHCPv6 concurrently. The underlying OS and utilities fully support dual stack, but the UI designers haven't encountered that configuration before. Conclusion: move to a device running a full OS, probably Debian-based, but I would consider BSD-based solutions too. For many people, the benefit of this strategy is simple: use the same skills across all the different devices, at home and in a professional capacity. Get rapid access to security updates. Install extra packages or enable extra features if really necessary. For example, I already use Shorewall and strongSwan on various Debian boxes and I find it more convenient to configure firewall zones using Shorewall syntax rather than OpenWRT's UI. Which boxes to start with? There are various considerations when going down this path:

• Start with existing hardware, or buy new devices that are easier to re-flash? Sometimes there are other reasons to buy new hardware, for example, when upgrading a broadband connection to Gigabit or when an older NAS gets a noisy fan or struggles with SSD performance and in these cases, the decision about what to buy can be limited to those devices that are optimal for replacing the OS.
• How will the device be supported? Can other non-technical users do troubleshooting? If mixing and matching components, how will faults be identified? If buying a purpose-built NAS box and the CPU board fails, will the vendor provide next day replacement, or could it be gone for a month? Is it better to use generic components that you can replace yourself?
• Is a completely silent/fanless solution necessary?
• Is it possibly to completely avoid embedded microcode and firmware?
• How many other free software developers are using the same box, or will you be first?

Discussing these options I recently started threads on the debian-user mailing list discussing options for routers and home NAS boxes. A range of interesting suggestions have already appeared, it would be great to see any other ideas that people have about these choices.

There has been a lot of news recently about the 100th anniversaries of various events that took place during the Great War. On 21 November 1916, the SS Hunscraft sailed from Southampton to France. My great grandfather, Robert Pocock, was aboard. He was part of the Australian Imperial Force, 3rd Divisional Train. It's sad that Australians had to travel half way around the world to break up fist fights and tank battles. Sadder still that some people who romanticize the mistakes of imperialism are being appointment to significant positions of power. Fortunately my great grandfather returned to Australia in one piece, many Australians didn't.

Some personal observations about the terrorist atrocities around the world based on evidence from Wikipedia and other sources The year 2015 saw a series of distressing terrorist attacks in France. 2015 was also the 30th anniversary of the French Government's bombing of a civilian ship at port in New Zealand, murdering a photographer who was on board at the time. This horrendous crime has been chronicled in various movies including The Rainbow Warrior Conspiracy (1989) and The Rainbow Warrior (1993). The Paris attacks are a source of great anxiety for the people of France but they are also an attack on Europe and all civilized humanity as well. Rather than using them to channel more anger towards Muslims and Arabs with another extended (yet ineffective) state of emergency, isn't it about time that France moved on from the evils of its colonial past and "drains the swamp" where unrepentant villains are thriving in its security services? Fran ois Hollande and S gol ne Royal. Royal's brother G rard Royal allegedly planted the bomb in the terrorist mission to New Zealand. It is ironic that Royal is now Minister for Ecology while her brother sank the Greenpeace flagship. If Fran ois and S gol ne had married (they have four children together), would G rard be the president's brother-in-law or terrorist-in-law? The question has to be asked: if it looks like terrorism, if it smells like terrorism, if the victim of that French Government attrocity is as dead as the victims of Islamic militants littered across the floor of the Bataclan, shouldn't it also be considered an act of terrorism? If it was not an act of terrorism, then what is it that makes it differ? Why do French officials refer to it as nothing more than "a serious error", the term used by Prime Minister Manuel Valls during a recent visit to New Zealand in 2016? Was it that the French officials felt it was necessary for Libert , galit , fraternit ? Or is it just a limitation of the English language that we only have one word for terrorism, while French officials have a different word for such acts carried out by those who serve their flag? If the French government are sincere in their apology, why have they avoided releasing key facts about the atrocity, like who thought up this plot and who gave the orders? Did the soldiers involved volunteer for a mission with the code name Op ration Satanique, or did any other members of their unit quit rather than have such a horrendous crime on their conscience? What does that say about the people who carried out the orders? If somebody apprehended one of these rogue employees of the French Government today, would they be rewarded with France's highest honour, like those tourists who recently apprehended an Islamic terrorist on a high-speed train? If terrorism is such an absolute evil, why was it so easy for the officials involved to progress with their careers? Would an ex-member of an Islamic terrorist group be able to subsequently obtain US residence and employment as easily as the French terror squad's commander Louis-Pierre Dillais? When you consider the comments made by Donald Trump recently, the threats of violence and physical aggression against just about anybody he doesn't agree with, is this the type of diplomacy that the US will practice under his rule commencing in 2017? Are people like this motivated by a genuine concern for peace and security, or are these simply criminal acts of vengence backed by political leaders with the maturity of schoolyard bullies?

As the US elections finish, many people are scratching their heads wondering what it all means. For example, is Trump serious about the things he has been saying, or is he simply saying whatever was most likely to make a whole bunch of really stupid people crawl out from under their rocks to vote for him? Was he serious about winning at all, or was it just the ultimate reality TV experiment? Will he show up for work in 2017, or like Australia's billionaire Clive Palmer, will he set a new absence record for an elected official? Ironically, Palmer and Trump have both been dogged by questions over their business dealings, will Palmer's descent towards bankruptcy be replicated in the ongoing fraud trial against Trump University and similar scandals? While the answer to those questions may not be clear for some time, some interesting observations can be made at this point. The world has been going racist. In the UK, for example, authorities have started putting up anti-Muslim posters with an eery resemblance to Hitler's anti-Jew propaganda. It makes you wonder if the Brexit result was really the "will of the people", or were the people deliberately whipped up into a state of irrational fear by a bunch of thugs seeking political power? Who thought The Man in the High Castle was fiction? In January 2015, a pilot of The Man in the High Castle, telling the story of a dystopian alternative history where Hitler has conquered America, was the most-watched original series on Amazon Prime. It appears Trump supporters have already been operating US checkpoints abroad for some time, achieving widespread notoriety when they blocked a family of British Muslims from visiting Disneyland in 2015. Ambushing them at the last moment as they were about to board their flight, it is unthinkable how anybody could be so cruel. When you reflect on statements made by Trump and the so-called "security" practices around the world, this would appear to be only a taste of things to come though. Is it a coincidence that Brexit and Trump both happened in the same year that the copyright on Mein Kampf expired? Ironically, in the chapter on immigration Hitler specifically singles out the U.S.A. for his praise, is that the sort of rave review that Trump aspires to when he talks about making America great again? US voters have traditionally held concerns about the power of the establishment. The US Federal Reserve has been in the news almost every week since the financial crisis, but did you know that the very concept of central banking was thrown out the window four times in America's history? Is Trump the type of hardliner who will go down this path again, or will it be business as usual? In his book Rich Dad's Guide to Investing in Gold & Silver, Robert Kiyosaki and Michael Maloney encourage people to consider putting most of their wealth into gold and silver bullion. Whether you like the politics of Trump and Brexit or not, are we entering an era where it will be prudent for people to keep at least ten percent of net wealth in this asset class again? Online dealers like BullionVault in Europe already appear to be struggling under the pressure as people rush to claim the free grams of bullion credited to newly opened accounts. The Facebook effect In recent times, there has been significant attention on the question of how Facebook and Google can influence elections, some European authorities have even issued alerts comparing this threat to terrorism. Yet in the US election, it was simple email that stole the limelight (or conveniently diverted attention from other threats), first with Clinton's private email server and later with Wikileaks exposing the entire email history of Clinton's chief of staff. The Podesta emails, while being boring for outsiders, are potentially far more damaging as they undermine the morale of Clinton's grass roots supporters. These people are essential for knocking on doors and distributing leaflets in the final phase of an election campaign, but after reading about Clinton's close relationship with big business, many of them may well have chosen to stay home. Will future political candidates seek to improve their technical competance, or will they simply be replaced by candidates who are born hackers and fluent in the language of a digital world?

Software Defined Radio (SDR) provides many opportunities for both experimentation and solving real-world problems. It is not exactly a new technology but it has become significantly more accessible due to the increases in desktop computing power (for performing the DSP functions) and simultaneous reduction in the cost of SDR hardware. Thanks to the availability of a completely packaged gqrx and GNU Radio solution, you can now get up and running in less than half an hour and spending less than fifty dollars/pounds/euros. We provided a full demo of the Debian Hams gqrx solution at Mini DebConf Vienna (video) and hope to provide a similar demo at MiniDebConf Cambridge on the coming weekend of 12-13 November. gqrx is also available for Fedora users. Choosing hardware There are many different types of hardware, ranging from the low-cost RTL-SDR USB dongles to full duplex multi-transceiver systems. My recommendation is to start with an RTL-SDR dongle due to extremely low cost, this will give you an opportunity to reflect on the opportunities of this technology before putting money into one of the transceivers and their accessories. The RTL-SDR dongle also benefits from being a small self-contained solution that you can carry around and experiment with or demo just about anywhere. Important: Don't buy the cheapest generic RTL TV/radio receivers. It is absolutely essential to buy one of the units that has been explicitly promoted for SDR. These typically have a temperature compensated crystal oscillator (TCXO) which is absolutely essential for the reception of narrowband voice and digital signals. Without this, it is only possible to receive wideband broadcash FM radio and TV channels. For those who want to try it out with us at MiniDebConf Cambridge, Technofix has UK stock (online ordering), they are about 26. Getting gqrx up and running fast Note: to avoid the wrong kernel module being loaded automatically, it is recoemmended that you don't connect the RTL-SDR dongle before you install the packages. If you did already connect it, you may need to reboot or rmmod dvb_usb_rtl28xxu. If you are using a Debian jessie system, you can get all the necessary packages from jessie-backports. If you haven't already enabled backports, you can do so with a command like this:
$ sudo echo "deb http://ftp.ch.debian.org/debian jessie-backports main" >> /etc/apt/sources.list
Make sure your local index is updated and then install the necessary packages:
$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get install -t jessie-backports gqrx-sdr rtl-sdr
Running it for the first time Once the packages are installed, connect the RTL-SDR dongle to the computer and then start the gqrx GUI from a terminal:
$ gqrx
If the GUI fails to appear, look carefully at the error messages. It may be that the wrong kernel module has been loaded. The properties window appears, select the RTL-SDR dongle: Now the main screen will appear. Choose the wideband FM mode "WFM (mono)" and change the frequency to a value in the FM broadcast band such as 100MHz. Click the "Power on" button in the top left corner, just under the "File" menu, to start reception. Click in the middle of a strong signal to tune to that station. If you don't hear anything, check the squelch setting (it should be more negative than the signal strength value) and increase the Gain control at the bottom right hand side of the window. Looking for ham / amateur radio signals A popular band for hams is between 144 - 148 MHz (in some countries only a subset of this band is used). This is referred to as the two-meter band, as that is the wavelength at this frequency. Hams often use the narrowband FM mode in this band, especially with repeater stations. Change the "Mode" setting from "WFM" to "Narrow FM" and change the frequency to a value in the middle of the band. Look for signals in the radio spectrum and click on them to hear them. If you are not sure which part of the band to look in, search for the two-meter band plan for your country/region and look for the repeater output frequencies in the band plan.

FOSDEM is one of the world's premier meetings of free software developers, with over five thousand people attending each year. FOSDEM 2017 takes place 4-5 February 2017 in Brussels, Belgium. This email contains information about:

• Real-Time communications dev-room and lounge,
• speaking opportunities,
• volunteering in the dev-room and lounge,
• related events around FOSDEM, including the XMPP summit,
• social events (the legendary FOSDEM Beer Night and Saturday night dinners provide endless networking opportunities),
• the Planet aggregation sites for RTC blogs

Call for participation - Real Time Communications (RTC) The Real-Time dev-room and Real-Time lounge is about all things involving real-time communication, including: XMPP, SIP, WebRTC, telephony, mobile VoIP, codecs, peer-to-peer, privacy and encryption. The dev-room is a successor to the previous XMPP and telephony dev-rooms. We are looking for speakers for the dev-room and volunteers and participants for the tables in the Real-Time lounge. The dev-room is only on Saturday, 4 February 2017. The lounge will be present for both days. To discuss the dev-room and lounge, please join the FSFE-sponsored Free RTC mailing list. To be kept aware of major developments in Free RTC, without being on the discussion list, please join the Free-RTC Announce list. Speaking opportunities Note: if you used FOSDEM Pentabarf before, please use the same account/username Real-Time Communications dev-room: deadline 23:59 UTC on 17 November. Please use the Pentabarf system to submit a talk proposal for the dev-room. On the "General" tab, please look for the "Track" option and choose "Real-Time devroom". Link to talk submission. Other dev-rooms and lightning talks: some speakers may find their topic is in the scope of more than one dev-room. It is encouraged to apply to more than one dev-room and also consider proposing a lightning talk, but please be kind enough to tell us if you do this by filling out the notes in the form. You can find the full list of dev-rooms on this page and apply for a lightning talk at https://fosdem.org/submit Main track: the deadline for main track presentations is 23:59 UTC 31 October. Leading developers in the Real-Time Communications field are encouraged to consider submitting a presentation to the main track. First-time speaking? FOSDEM dev-rooms are a welcoming environment for people who have never given a talk before. Please feel free to contact the dev-room administrators personally if you would like to ask any questions about it. Submission guidelines The Pentabarf system will ask for many of the essential details. Please remember to re-use your account from previous years if you have one. In the "Submission notes", please tell us about:

• the purpose of your talk
• any other talk applications (dev-rooms, lightning talks, main track)
• availability constraints and special needs

You can use HTML and links in your bio, abstract and description. If you maintain a blog, please consider providing us with the URL of a feed with posts tagged for your RTC-related work. We will be looking for relevance to the conference and dev-room themes, presentations aimed at developers of free and open source software about RTC-related topics. Please feel free to suggest a duration between 20 minutes and 55 minutes but note that the final decision on talk durations will be made by the dev-room administrators. As the two previous dev-rooms have been combined into one, we may decide to give shorter slots than in previous years so that more speakers can participate. Please note FOSDEM aims to record and live-stream all talks. The CC-BY license is used. Volunteers needed To make the dev-room and lounge run successfully, we are looking for volunteers:

• FOSDEM provides video recording equipment and live streaming, volunteers are needed to assist in this
• organizing one or more restaurant bookings (dependending upon number of participants) for the evening of Saturday, 4 February
• participation in the Real-Time lounge
• helping attract sponsorship funds for the dev-room to pay for the Saturday night dinner and any other expenses
• circulating this Call for Participation (text version) to other mailing lists

See the mailing list discussion for more details about volunteering. Related events - XMPP and RTC summits The XMPP Standards Foundation (XSF) has traditionally held a summit in the days before FOSDEM. There is discussion about a similar summit taking place on 2 and 3 February 2017. XMPP Summit web site - please join the mailing list for details. We are also considering a more general RTC or telephony summit, potentially in collaboration with the XMPP summit. Please join the Free-RTC mailing list and send an email if you would be interested in participating, sponsoring or hosting such an event. Social events and dinners The traditional FOSDEM beer night occurs on Friday, 3 February. On Saturday night, there are usually dinners associated with each of the dev-rooms. Most restaurants in Brussels are not so large so these dinners have space constraints and reservations are essential. Please subscribe to the Free-RTC mailing list for further details about the Saturday night dinner options and how you can register for a seat. Spread the word and discuss If you know of any mailing lists where this CfP would be relevant, please forward this email (text version). If this dev-room excites you, please blog or microblog about it, especially if you are submitting a talk. If you regularly blog about RTC topics, please send details about your blog to the planet site administrators:

	Planet site	Admin contact
All projects	Free-RTC Planet (http://planet.freertc.org)	contact planet@freertc.org
XMPP	Planet Jabber (http://planet.jabber.org)	contact ralphm@ik.nu
SIP	Planet SIP (http://planet.sip5060.net)	contact planet@sip5060.net
SIP (Espa ol)	Planet SIP-es (http://planet.sip5060.net/es/)	contact planet@sip5060.net

Please also link to the Planet sites from your own blog or web site as this helps everybody in the free real-time communications community. Contact For any private queries, contact us directly using the address fosdem-rtc-admin@freertc.org and for any other queries please ask on the Free-RTC mailing list. The dev-room administration team:

• Sa l Ibarra Corretg (email)
• Iain R. Learmonth (email)
• Ralph Meijer (email)
• Daniel-Constantin Mierla (email)
• Daniel Pocock (email)