Flouzo Blog

Project news Flouzo Book & Use cases by Xavier Antoviaque

We are currently working on the use cases for the beta version of Flouzo. The work is about 50% done, but there is already more than 30 pages, and it is starting to give a good feeling of what it will look like once it has been implemented.

I have thus added an extension to the wiki, to generate two books based on the latest changes on the wiki:

• The Flouzo Book (PDF, 16 pages), made of the most important elements of the Flouzo.net wiki.
• The Flouzo Use Cases (PDF, 31 pages), the latest version of the Flouzo.net specifications.

Just for fun, here is a mindmap that helped refining the relationship between users, campaigns and organizations in Flouzo:

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Project news First campaign: Iliad & Freebox by Xavier Antoviaque

The first campaign can be found at : freebox.flouzo.net:

Several free software writers have called Iliad, one of the main telecom companies in France, to respect their work, and a judicial proceeding has begun to demand the respect of their licence. This action follows repeated refusals of Iliad to publish the source code of the Free Software included in their Freebox. Although the writers appreciate “the innovative contributions that Iliad has made in the telecommunication industry, along its historical inclination toward Free Software”, they are concerned about the reasons that may have led Iliad to this philosophical swing.

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Project news A few steps away from launch... by Xavier Antoviaque

Almost there! :-) The company statutes (in French) are ready and have been signed by all founding members, we are still gathering a few remaining items before being able to hand them over to the French admdinistration. The contract with Neuf Cegetel for EasyNeuf is going well, it should be enough to give Flouzo enough founds to begin its activity - and I investigate other opportunities. The work load becoming quite heavy, we are looking for a community coordinator; the job offer is in French, but if you know enough French to be able to understand it, you may apply - international profiles could fit the job.

Also, we are working on the first campaign : Loic is looking for founds to develop a Free Software alternative to Google Reader. In the meantime, Ayo is working on the design of the website, so soon it should be very nice looking. :)

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Project news Concrete stuff? by Xavier Antoviaque

The project matured the  last few weeks. Loïc Dachary joined to take care of development, and we have worked a lot on the Use cases of the future website. They are of course open to comments...

The ethical comitee is being finalised, this should be done within the week. In the meantime, the comapny statues are being written (I'll add them to the wiki when the lawyer is finished), and a huge pile of paper is being prepared for our lovely French administration.

I've also started working on several contracts to get some money for the project, as we have to pay the lawyer, the development, the servers, the limo... The project which is taking me the most time is for Neuf Cegetel, a French ISP, on the EasyGate project - btw, it is a quite nice Free Software project, which won the French FS "Lutece d'Or" award, as a special choice from the jury.

You can find other details in the brand new wiki. And if anything is unclear or weird, the forum (which is new, too), is there for you.

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Project news Good - we'll (perhaps) avoid going to jail by Xavier Antoviaque

Second lawyer, then! That time, the meeting was with Me Fulgan, lawyer specialised in business copyright law, and also former T4C player with I had the chance of meeting while I was working at GOA. A lot more serious, friendly than the other one, and he knew what he was talking about. :-)

Even if it was only a preliminary discussion, we were able to conclude that a hosting and service attitude could limit the risks. In a nutshell, we would basically charge for an given amount of money for each campaign, but the money wouldn't go through Flouzo (campaign creators would have to use a Paypal account for example, where the money would directly arrive), sign a real paper contract and verify the identity of the campaign creators.

As this is quite a constraint, the first phase (getting donation pledges without any actual payment) could be launched while the other elements are being sent and validated. It adds some work for the campaign creator, and we'll have to carefully choose the amounts we'll ask for, but at least it's a good way of doing it legally speaking. Now we'll have to prepare nice spreadsheets, to know how much we would need to allow the project to stay afloat financially. And try to get one or two contracts to get some cash to strat things off. So, we aren't quite there yet, but things are moving forward.

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