Building links with the Co-operative Movement.
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Intro
- We test alternatives to Skype – not entirely successfully
- Linphone – looks promising, but…
- Ekiga – we couldn’t get either of these to work
- Both use SIP – Session Initiation Protocol
- We suspect the issue was due to fire walls or other networking problems
- Linux Outlaws managed to get them working – great podcast that’s worth checking out
4:15 Why bother struggling with open source software that doesn’t always work?
- Are we stubborn freetards, or just masochists?
- Why do we reject the gifts of our great benefactor, Bill Gates?
- We have a deep respect for the open and ethical development model
- Debian is essentially an international workers’ co-operative
- FOSS proves that democratic production is effective
- Successful co-operatives prove that there are viable alternatives to hierarchical capitalism
- Download some software and participate in an alternative economic model – how can you resist that?
7:00 Linking Open Source with the Cooperative movement
- Co-operation isn’t new – people have been doing it for a long time
- Trade unions have a long history of involvement with Co-ops
- Links between Mondragon and United Steel Workers in North America
- Mondragon is a federation of co-operative movements based in the Basque region of Spain
- USW is a large general union organising in the US, Canada and Caribbean – linked to Unite in the UK and Ireland
- Mondragon is a highly successful, multinational co-op
- Mondragon works in finance, retail, education and manufacture, making bicycles and many other products
- The work with USW aims to rebuild the manufacturing sector in the US on a co-operative model – very exciting!
11:25 The Coopertative movement in the UK
- There’s a difference between coops and collectives
- There are different kinds of coop
- The Coop range of businesses
- John Lewis
- Cooperative businesses like this function within capitalism but demonstrate that stakeholder capitalism is more sustainable than shareholder capitalism
- Suma Wholefoods is a workers’ co-op – not to be confused with the anti-union Wholefoods Market
- Co-ops create islands of sane, human economics in a neoliberal sea
- Let’s work to network these islands – unions, FOSS and the co-op movement
- Let’s make work democratic
14:50 Useful free tools for union activists
- You don’t have to install Linux to use free software
- Save money – replace Office with a free alternative
- Firefox – probably the mostly widely used free software – also Chrome and Chromium
- Open systems are more secure – many eyes, fewer bugs
- Libre/Open Office – can open most text files, and save in most file formats. Also exports to PDF
- What’s the business model? Why do some companies sponsor open source? Because the benefit of sharing outweighs the profit they’d make by making it proprietary
- The Document Foundation – oversees the Libre Office project
- Scribus is an excellent desktop publishing programme – along the lines of Adobe InDesign or Quark Express
- Inkscape – Open Source vector graphics editor, along the lines of Illustrator or CorelDraw
- GIMP – similar functionality to Photoshop
- Also Audacity for audio and OpenShot for video. We use Audacity to record the show
28:30 Listener feedback and acknowledgements
- Marc of Radio Labour
- Keir of Liberty & Solidarity
- John from the TUC
- Jamie on twitter/identi.ca
For voice communications I’ve recently switched from Skype to Mumble for conducting meetings. Whilst its not P2P in the way Skype/SIP is having a central server means a conversation with more than two people takes much less bandwidth than the P2P approach. Another tool that might be decent is QuteCom, which used to be called openwengo
Oh and on the subject of Skype: http://skype-open-source.blogspot.com/
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