This is my side of the story about the BarCampFCT event.

First of all, congratulations to the organization for selecting a great place to make the Barcamp. I never went to the FCT UNL before, but I loved the peace, the view and the weather. However, next time try not to do a Barcamp on a amphitheater.. it kills networking!

The day began with a slow start… The poor guy talking about FireHOL had the duty of waking people and do the kick off. Next talk about technique presentations by João Rico started well, but quickly became boring. I had to get out of the room and search for some coffee…

This was actually a good idea, because at the coffee break room, it was happening a lot of networking! Kudos for the cookies and the coffee, they were great! This happens to be the first time to know people and mingle around.

Next it was the lunch… the lunch was perfect. Perfect. Perfect. Congratulations for this!

Wizi arrived late, and managed twice to almost kill the barcamp. On their first talk, they asked for 5 minutes, and delivered some 20+ boring talk… Can’t help it…

But then there was halfbaked! Lot’s of great ideas about creating a new company, and lots of laughing too. Great time! TarPipe’s didn’t disappoint, although I was expecting a more practical talk about the service (/platform/product).

After more coffee and cookies, it was time to IGNITE! First I have to say that ignite sessions should have been done earlier, and the organization should be more fair and respect the speakers. Some got 10 or 15 minutes, some got 5 with auto rotating slides (killing the presentation), and then Wizi destroyed all the ignite spirit.

I managed to get 5 minutes auto-rotating slides and talked about “Debian Sucks” (it doesn’t, really!) and the OpenSSL fiasco.

Overall it was a great day, the organization deserve a great applause! I’ve got some good conversations, new ideas, met new people, and learned how a company (Wizi) can easily generate some bad buzz at an event.

Together with Tiago Pinto I’ve completed a TarPipe API for Ruby.

tarpipe is a publishing mediation and distribution platform that simplifies regular upload activities

The gem is available here and the sources are on github. It is my first released gem so feel free to send some tips and suggestions.

TarPipe is currently evolving very fast so me and Tiago will make sure our library stays up to date. Have fun doing your uploads!

Next Saturday, Barcamp at FCT. The company I work for, 7syntax, arranged for people to share some booze at the British Pub.

More details here. See you there?

This is not good news….

$ ssh-vulnkey 
COMPROMISED: 2048 b0:39:fe:46:51:0f:6b:87:24:db:af:c0:fa:d7:63:d3

and this is only my laptop…. I’m (we’re?) screwed…

Yesterday, Portugal celebrated the so called Carnation Revolution. Since then, this day has often been called the “Freedom day”, because during the revolution, the Portuguese regime went from an authoritarian dictatorship to a democracy.

Thirty four years have passed since Portuguese fought for their freedom, as in many other societies freedom is now taken for granted. Though most freedom is not within the grasp of our eyes, and so the majority of people don’t know that many other freedoms have been taken from them on the last decades.

Quoting Richard Buckman and Joshua Gay:

The waning days of the 20^th century seemed like an Orwellian nightmare: laws preventing publication of scientific research on software; laws preventing sharing software; an overabundance of software patents preventing development; and end-user license agreements that strip the user of all freedoms—including ownership, privacy, sharing, and understanding how their software works.

Proprietary software means, fundamentally, that you don’t control what it does; you can’t study the source code, or change it. It’s not surprising that clever businessmen find ways to use their control to put you at a disadvantage. Microsoft has done this several times, but they are not alone.

Of course, Hollywood and some record companies plan to use “trusted computing” for DRM, so that downloaded videos and music can be played only on one specified computer.

All these maneuvers are taking away your freedoms. If we don’t watch ourselves, our free society will bounce back to the authoritarian dictatorship’s times, and your computer will start to obey not you, but the “trusted computing” software installed. And the dangers are greater each year.

If you want to keep your freedom, you must be prepared to defend it.

Today you can avoid being restricted by proprietary software not using it. If you run GNU/Linux or another free (as in free speech) operating system, and if you avoid installing proprietary applications on it, then you are in charge of what your computer does. By doing this, you are fighting for your freedoms, and contributing to a real free society.

You can learn more about the Free Software movement at their website.