Software Freedom Kosova Conference

Giuseppe Maxia is the MySQL community manager, and a well known contributor to several open source projects. Currently working for Sun Microsystems, he has been a consultant and a database designer in his country and abroad. His working experience includes several jobs for the United Nations in India, Pakistan, and Kosovo. He worked for the multinational mission in Kosovo from 1998 to 2002. He lives in Sardinia, Italy, with his Kosovar wife.

In Freedom beyond free of charge: Open source for a mission, Giuseppe looks at the perception of Free Software, explaining why the freedom allowed by free software goes beyond the price tag. Giuseppe shows how free software gives you independence from constraints on several levels, either economic, political, or technological. This is the story of how free software helped an international mission in Kosovo do a good job.


Daniel Carchidi is Publication Director at MIT OpenCourseWare where he is responsible for the overall schedule and quality of the OpenCourseWare publication, which includes over 1925 courses from MIT's 33 academic departments as well as the Highlights for High School portal. Prior to joining MIT OpenCourseWare, Dan held management positions at GE Corporate and GE Capital, where he developed knowledge systems and other e-learning applications. He holds a BA from the University of Connecticut, an MA from Teachers' College, Columbia University, and a PhD from the University of Michigan's Center for the Study of Higher and Postsecondary Education. 

This presentation examines how a rather simple idea, making course materials available online at no cost to the user, has grown into a movement that is having truly global impact. The talk will focus on how MIT developed and implemented the idea, what is known about the impact that MIT OpenCourseWare is having, and what they see as the future direction of the project.


Flavia Marzano is a Computer scientist. She is a member of the Italian Open Source committee, head of the FLOSS Competence Center of the Province of Rome and an evaluator of IST European Projects. She teaches at Bologna University. She is active in the definition of Italian e-government and e-participation action plans and related call for projects and evaluations. She is also a member of the Scientific Committee of a Master in Open Source Software Management program and a Project Manager of the eParticipation project of the Province of Rome.

In her presentation, Flavia will consider key aspects of buying software for Public Administrations: assuring pluralism, transparency, competition, security, integration with software already in use, data continuity, interoperability and availability of source code at least for inspection and traceability even in case of proprietary software. Further on, Flavia will analyze some free software “myths”: costs, reliability, security, maintenance issue, licensing, rights, and other issues.


Brian King has been involved in the Mozilla community since 1999. In that time, he has worked building software on top of the Mozilla Application Platform. He is President of the Mozdev Community Organization, aka mozdev.org, a community site for hosting Mozilla-based projects and for promoting Mozilla technologies. Brian is a software consultant at Briks Software, based in Slovenia.
 

Other Speakers

Martin Dengler will offer a gentle introduction to free software for the educator/civil servant. "Free Software" and "Open Source" are essential phrases for today's geeks and wonks. This presentation provides a brief history of "F/LOSS", practical answers to the questions educators / government institutions may have, notable successes and trends in those areas, and direction as to further, fruitful inquiries.


Ekin Meroğlu is a free software developer from Istanbul, Turkey. He has been an active member of Turkey's open source community for 9 years and since 2006, he has been working for Pardus Linux Distribution as a full time developer. Ekin is the release manager of the upcoming release of Pardus Linux and the director of corporate projects based on Pardus.

Pardus Linux, being a relatively new distribution developed with usability and desktop usage in mind, has a lot of new features and unique technologies. In his presentation, Ekin will mainly focus on well known problems of various Linux distributions in the desktop market, Pardus Linux' solutions to these problems and aforementioned technologies developed within the project. He will also address Pardus' development model, Pardus developer community and Pardus release cycle.


Jan Husar focuses on solving real life problems like conservation issues, competitiveness, transparency, choice and freedom. Jan founded SKOSI, a virtual activist project in 2003 with strong focus on Free/Libre and Open Source Software (FLOSS) and currently holds a Director function. In 2006 he founded AOSTE, a FLOSS European Cooperation project and in 2009, EarthCause.org, to promote local activism and conservation worldwide.

Jan volunteers as a hard core activist, advisor to Slovak Government and representative of Slovakia in Brussels where he participates in expert groups of the European Commission. He is also involved in many open source and open standards projects: Software Freedom Day International, DIGISTAN, FSFE, Ubuntu, KDE, etc.


Marco Fioretti is a freelance writer, activist and teacher about open digital standards, Free Software, digital technologies and the their relations and impact on education, ethics, civil rights and environmental issues. Besides more than 200 articles already published on several Italian and international magazines (from USA and UK to India, Germany and Spain), Marco is the author of the Family Guide to Digital Freedom, "the one book on software and digital technologies that no parent can ignore".

In his presentation, Marco will explain how and why Free Software is essential to improve quality of life, active citizenship and education of a developing nation. He will explain why F/OSS should be used as a mean, not an end, as part of a bigger process and taking into account local needs, instead of blindly copying foreign practices.


Katja Henttonen is employed as a systems analyst by VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland. Since 2006, she has been working in research projects which study free and open source software, especially from the view point of product family architecture. Before joining VTT, she gained several years of industrial experience in design, implementation and configuration management of advanced telecommunications solutions. Her volunteer F/OSS activities have included, for example, giving lectures on Linux at schools and developing F/OSS based information systems for NGO's. She is a member of the FSFE Fellowship and Finnish Linux User Group(FLUG).

Based on a paper written along with her colleague, Janne Merilinna, Katja will introduce a revolutionary approach which enables even laymen to become contributors in the F/OSS movement. The approach is based on a combination of Domain-Specific Modelling and F/OSS development. In what they call "Free or Open Models" (F/OM) development, users share (a) visual models from which complete code generation is possible and (b) complete modelling infrastructure for various application domains. Both models and the infrastructure can be used, modified and extended freely. For the first time, even computer illiterate people can enjoy the freedom of modifying software and sharing their improvements with others.


Miha Peternel is employed at the University of Ljubljana - Faculty of Computer and Information Science. He holds MSc in computer vision. As a postgraduate student he co-authored a course book on open-source application software, administered a number of Linux systems with several open-source Linux applications for course purposes, and also participated in industrial software projects incorporating open source components. He has been responsible for the development of open access publication database that was the first open access database in the region and has recently become the official database for publication of student theses. He has also worked on computer games, industrial computer vision, emulators, computer forensics and web voice technology.

In his presentation he will talk about Open Access to publications and open source software tools to implement publication repositories. He will present the case of development of an institutional repository ePrints.FRI with practical insights into publication repository development, deployment and project management in the context of an academic institution.


Miloš Rančić is computer administrator, anarchist and Wikimedian from Belgrade, Serbia. Since 2003 involved in various Wikimedia projects and member of a couple of Wikimedia Foundation bodies. One of the founders of Wikimedia Serbia and its first president (2005-2007). Founder of the project Anarchopedia, as well as a number of local, regional and international initiatives. Has a couple of papers in cognitive and computational linguistics. Software developer interested in computational linguistics, VoIP, knowledge management, social networks.

At the conference, Milos will speak on decision-making processes in Wikimedia communities.


Visar Shehu works at South East European University in Tetove, as an assistant in the Computer Science Department. He has a Masters degree in Computer Science from Purdue School of Science in Indianapolis. His research interests are computer vision, machine learning techniques, computer graphics and data visualization.

At SFK09, Visar will present an open source toolkit (Processing) used widely in Data Visualization. He will discuss different visualization methods from the scientific visualization perspective as well as the computational art discipline. Processing is a tool based in Java that enables artists with some or without any knowledge of programming languages and technologies to create rich multimedia applications. The tool is used to create data visualization applications, but often applications written in it are presented as art installations in many galleries. It is sometimes referred to as a bridge between programmers and artists. This presentation will focus on the possibilities of programming in Processing, and how one can use the tool to merge the world of computer programming with visual arts. The presentation will also show case studies on how people use Processing as a tool to create desktop applications, rich multimedia web sites, computer games, art installations as well as interactive applications used in robotics, HCI tools etc.

The presentation will be helpful to people who are interested in fields such as computational art, new media or data visualization. Students, instructors, artists, designers… can learn about a new tool used not only in data visualization but also in prototyping and visual art.


Leonardo Gastón De Luca is an English > Spanish / Spanish > English translator from Buenos Aires, Argentina. He has been using free software on and off since 1999 until he migrated completely in 2007. He is a free software advocate and hacktivist. He started learning programming in 2007 after attending a Python presentation at a free software conference. Leonardo has been involved as organizer in the Ubuntu Argentina user group but he has later switched to gNewSense GNU/Linux, a 100% free distribution, and he is now an active member of its community. He is founder of KDE Argentina and a member of the Python Argentina user group. He is part of the organization of PyCon Argentina to be held in September in Buenos Aires. He has produced countless translations for the free software community: games, applications, blogs, documentation, etc. Leonardo is also an active member of the team of developers of the DelphOS Project whose objective is to produce a new 100% free GNU/Linux distribution focused on usability.

In Being a n00b, yet hacking in Python, he will do a basic presentation of the Python programming language using real world coding examples.


Andrea Chiarottinois an Italian freelance programmer. Since January he joined Crop, an experienced Italian Web Agency based in Torino. He has experience on developing web application using open source technologies like Java and PHP. He is currently involved in a mission for the IPAK website update, within the framework of the EC funded project of support to Investment Promotion Agency of Kosovo (IPAK).

At the conference, Andrea will present CakePHP, the Rapid Development Framework for PHP, by showing how to bake a simple blog using the framework. You can download the blog app here http://www.articioch.com/blogtut.zip


Sanjin Bužo: Networking Manager at OWPSEE Foundation, peace activist, blogger, trainer. Advanced user of FLOSS: likes to experiment and try. Interested in video editing and its application to campaigning and social issues - has produced short videos.

Valentina Pellizzer: Executive Directress at OWPSEE Foundation, activist, feminist and manager. Valentina has an extensive knowledge and experience in the domain of: women/gender; media issues (citizen/advocacy journalism); ICTs advocacy/policy; Western Balkan region; development and organization management. Likes training and facilitation from digital stories to gender evaluation methodology (GEM); based policy research and analysis to ensure credible contributions of the NGOs sector to the policy process as well as building NGOs capacity to both lobby and engage constructively with state actors. Board Member of the Association for Progressive Communication (www.apc.org).

Sarajevo-based Sanjin and Valentina will present their FLOSS inspired projects: OWPSEE, www.ict-policy.ba, migration to FLOSS, digital stories and the GISWatch. And also a modality of using, presenting and promoting ICT to civil society actors along the three steps of a learning cycle: accessing information (as much as possible in the own language), getting capacity and tools and eventually entering the advocacy and policy arena to monitor and influence changes that are coherent with a social-open vision.


Alessio L.R. Pennasilico, a.k.a. mayhem, 30 years, lives and works in Verona (Italy) as a Security Evangelist for Alba S.T. s.r.l.

His personal and working interests are into Information Technology, focusing on security issues, OpenSource and Digital Rights. That’s why he soon became a member of many independent organizations, such as AIPSI(ISSA Italian chapter), AIP, CLUSIT, Italian Linux Society, OpenBeer, VoIPSA, Metro Olografix, Sikurezza.org, ISAC-IT, Recursiva.org, Thawte, ISECOM’s Hacker’s Profiling Project (HPP), Critical Infrastructures Security Test and Analysis Lab (CrISTAL) and many LUGs.

He is usually invited as a speaker at most of the national events such as IT Underground, Hack in the Box, CCC, Confidence, SMAU, Infosecurity, E-privacy, Linux Day, OpenCon, OpenEXP, ESC and the italian HackMeeting. Alessio also holds workshops in secondary schools and italian universities, with the aim of spreading the culture for an aware use of nowaday’s technology.

Can VoIP be useful to develop a nation, to connect citizens and companies? Obviously yes, but security is more than a simple concerns We will see how OpenSource can help in implementing or developing secure VoIP services for companies and nations.


Milot Shala is a senior software engineer and a Kosovo FLOSS activist of many years.

He has used many tools and platforms in his professional life but mainly focused on cross platform desktop applications and embedded systems using open source tools. He has a Bachelor degree in Computer Science and has been programming for several years now. In his presentation, Milot will speak about cross platform rapid application development using Qt Framework with C++ using QtCreator IDE and SQLite database as lightweight data storage.


Giovanni Battista Gallus is a lawyer and free software and digital freedom activist. He is Vice-President of “Circolo dei Giuristi telematici - CGT”, Italian Association of Cyberlawyers and member of the board of "Apritisofware” (Association for the diffusion of free and open software and knowledge).

He is a consultant for the Sardinian Federation of CCRE-CEMR (Council of European Municipalities and Regions). Since 1999, he has devoted a substantial part of his practice to the implications of FLOSS and civil liberties on the Internet.

He is the author of several books and articles on juridical aspects of FLOSS, open content, copyright, privacy and computer forensics. He is an active member of the LUG (Linux users Group) in Cagliari - Italy.

He is also in charge as a public administrator in a small town of Italy, and is an active lobbyist for implementing free software solution in the public sector.

In his presentation, Giovanni Battista Gallus will analyse the European Union Public License (EUPL), which is a copyleft, open source license. He will briefly explain the rationale behind the license, and summarize its main developments. He will then focus on the importance of this new license, and its possible use outside the EU member states.

The talk with analyse advantages and drawbacks of the license, having particular regard to Public Administrations.

The EUPL, however, only applies to computer programs: Giovanni Battista Gallus will therefore finally consider whether there is the need for similar licenses for other copyrighted material, produced by or on behalf of the Public Administrations.


Misha Popovikj is a free software activist. He has been involved in the free software community in Macedonia and from 2007 has been a member of the non-profit "Free Software Macedonia", promoting free software and free culture via the "Share" programme of the organisation. His interest is in the social context of the free software and free culture movements.

In November 2007, it was announced that the Republic of Macedonia will deploy around 180.000 desktops running Edubuntu, as a part of the "Computer for every Student" project. This meant that the elementary and secondary education would be fully computerised, with no other than the GNU/Linux operating system, with its education oriented incarnation - Edubuntu. To the enjoyment of the free software community, these news echoed around the world as one of the biggest implementations parallel to the OLPC project. Now, almost two years after this announcement, what is the status of the project, and how can the advantages and shortcomings of the implementation be seen in a broader perspective of governmental policies. This paper will focus from the community perspective in analysing these issues.


Mirel Lame is an Albanian teacher of English and Informatics and author of many Ubuntu tutorials and a soon to be released Ubuntu textbook in Albanian.

When recently the Ministry of Education and Science in Albania installed scholastic computer laboratories took 83 seconds to boot on computers that came pre-installed with Windows Vista, Mirel demonstrated Edubuntu and will little training managed to have most of the staff use Ubuntu. In September, Mirel is going to propose to the local Teachers Administration in Kucove to ask for permission from the Ministry to test Ubuntu in their school through a project which he will lay out in his project Implementing Ubuntu and FLOSS in Albanian public schools.


Petrit Augustini, known as "Aeternus" on Albanian and English Wikipedias since 2006, is a former administrator of Albanian Wikipedia. In his presentation, Petrit will provide a general introduction to Wikipedia and its philosophy.


Xenofon Papadopoulos is a software development manager.

From September 2009 students in the Greek gymnasium of Sminthi will use One Laptop per Child OLPC XO-1s inside and outside of the classroom. The gymnasium of Sminthi is a Greek state school, in which all students are members of the Muslim minority and have either Pomak or Turkish as their mother tongue. The school has approximately 140 students with boys outnumbering girls, since many families living in the most remote villages still do not send their daughters to secondary school. Students of the Sminthi gymnasium come from around 15 villages, all located in the mountainous region of Xanthi in Thrace, Greece. I

In this paper one of the authors, Xenofon, presents their methodology for the OLPC deployment at the high school of Sminthi, ranging from the creation of a human network of teachers, members of the local community, social researchers and IT specialists, to the acquisition of the XO1 laptops, the development of applications and educational content, and the technical support of the project.

They suggest a holistic approach to the implementation of similar projects, and highlight the role of communities as the means to bring together and mobilize end users and technical experts. They present the use of Free Software as a fundamental component of such an approach, and demonstrate how it can be used to addresses both technical and non-technical aspects of the implementation. Finally, they lay their plans for further development and future OLPC deployments.


Shkumbin Saneja works as an independent ITS professional in Kosovo.

Shkumbin led OpenOffice.org localisation in Albanian starting in 2004. During 2004-2005 the efforts invested to develop and localise resulted in the first office application suite in Albanian, even before Microsoft's. Paper/Presentation will describe the route taken, then the promotion efforts with community and different insitutions and briefly the lessons learned during the process. Also, Shkumbin will describe the new developments in OpenOffice.org and how it can be improved.


Arbana Kadriu is a Masters candidate in Computer Science at the South East Europe University in Macedonia.

Natural Language Processing is one of the most rapid developing fields today. But, unfortunately this is correct only for those languages that have commercial demand. For the other, minor languages this is not the case. So, they must rely on open-source toolkits and built-in software packages. For the most part of languages, pools of raw texts or even simple wordlists are the resources most urgently needed. In this paper, Arbana tries to analyze and bring some open source solutions that can help in building NLP applications for a wider spectrum of languages. These solutions include designing text corpora, lexical databases, implementing a complete morphological and sentence parser for a particular language, building language models etc. Open-source toolkits and resources generate frames for research and data maintenance and this makes possible to overcome the isolationism of minor languages. And they play an important role to the advancement of language technology as a research area in general.


Baki Goxhaj is a freelance WordPress designer and developer from the beautiful Albanian town of Vlora.

Open Source is a really powerful resource for web designers and developers. In his presentation, Baki will demonstrate FLOSS tools and resources all web designers can use in their work.

Bernard Nikaj has received an MSc. in Analysis, Design and Management of Information Systems from London School of Economics (LSE) where his research concentrated on social issues of deploying and managing information systems within organizations, with particular interest in E-government initiatives. He currently works as Adviser on a number of projects in the areas of Public Administration Reform, Public Financial Management and Information Systems.

As Open Source becomes more and more crucial to the workings of corporations, governments and academic institutions, the issue of getting developers engaged in projects takes center stage. At the same time the subject of motivation represents one of the main issues in the open source debate. To further understand the open source phenomenon this presentation will concentrate on results of an inquiry into literature trying to answer a simple question: “what motivates developers to participate in Open Source Projects?” The paper will start by outlining the initial debate of “gift economy” as initiated by Eric S. Raymond, and will follow with other theoretical perspectives developed in the meantime. An outline of the intrinsic and extrinsic factors as well as their interrelation will be also presented.


Dražen Odobašić is a junior researcher at Faculty of Geodesy, University of Zagreb. His main interests involve spatial data, gis and databases. In addition, he's involved in translating free software to Croatian language, and an active member of several user groups.

At the conference he'll present Openstreetmap: what is the project and how can someone participate. Also he'll talk about what is the benefit of Openstreetmap for local communities and software developers.