What you missed on Drupal Code Sprint Manila

On 13 July 2008, DL, Joram, Jo, Marc, rbahaguejr, ganni, j francisco, and chris joined the Drupal Code Sprint Manila. The Code sprint aimed to create sites for two non-profit organizations. The Computer Professionals Union arranged the Kubo and coordinated with a number of non-profit organizations for the one-day activity. Collectivetech.org is providing the drupal webhosting for the outputs of the code sprint.






The Team started early. Before 10am, Jo was already on the venue. All the others arrived a few minutes after. We had internet connection provided by the Center for Environmental Concerns.

A subversion server, apache web server and MySQL database server were used during the code sprint. The participants formed two smaller groups. rbahaguejr, DL, ganni and Jo created the site for the Asian Peasant Coalition while marc, chris and joram joined to create Kodao Productions' portal.











The Asian Peasan Coalition (APC) according to their presentation is a:

"APC is an Asia-wide peasant coalition of farmers, landless peasants, fisherfolks, , agricultural workers, dalit, indigenous peoples, harders and pasturalists, including the women and youth across this sectors.






APC is an independent organization that shall not be subordinate to any international network, political parties, NGOs, government or religious bodies. It shall strive to achieve democracy and gender equality in all spheres of activities and decision making of the coalition. All member organizations maintain their independence and initiatives in the achievement of their aims and objectives." [1]

Kodao Productions (Kodao) hopes:

"... to bear witness to the Filipino people's struggle for justice and genuine democracy. By creating and distributing video and audio materials, we project and reproduce the people's experiences and ideas, forward their cause, and celebrate their victories." [2]





On the next code sprint you should join us.





Collectivetech.org has posted the Code Sprint outputs for Kodao and APC.

[1] Presentation during the Drupal Code Sprint
[2] http://kodao.multiply.com/

SMS about Ubuntu

I posted this how to for a friend having problems with his pppoe connection to bayantel dsl.

Yesterday, we got this sms;

I call you twice just to say that Ubuntu is running very well, it is connecting in internet. Salamat po!!!

.

Another happy user of Ubuntu. He is an Italian guy using Suse before the Demo session a few weeks ago.

CPU's Human Rights Violation Documentation System featured in Linux Journal (March 2008)

May maikling write-up ang Linux Journal tungkol sa karapatan-monitor na isang documentation system para sa human rights violations na nilabas ng Computer Professionals' Union noong nakaraang 10 Dec 2007.

Bisitahin ang www.cp-union.org. May bayad ang access sa Journal kaya inilagay namin ang write-up at screenshot sa cpu website.

ang proyekto ay matatagpuan sa code.google.com

ang demo site ay matatagpuan naman sa opensource.collectivetech.org

CPU's Human Rights Violations Documentation System featured in Linux Journal (March 2008)

Below is James Gray's short write-up for the Linux Journal's New Products section on Karapatan-Monitor.

Linux Journal is the premiere magazine covering the Linux community. It is the leading media brand of the Linux and Open Source markets. Karapatan-Monitor is a documentation system created for human rights workers. It is currently in active development.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Computer Professionals' Union Karapatan-Monitor

Here's some irony for you. On one hand, Google stifles human rights by censoring Google China for the authoritarian Chinese regime. At the same time, Google Code hosts an antidote, a new human-rights monitoring program, called Karapatan-Monitor. Created and maintained by the Computer Professionals' Union in the Philippines, the open-source Karapatan-Monitor records incidents of human-rights violations and allows for classification of violations, perpetrators and victim status. Specific victim updates (for example, court cases and file attachments) also can be recorded. Now, the question remains, “Dear Google, can those who need Karapatan-Monitor most, such as our Chinese brothers and sisters, even access it?”

www.cp-union.org

Ref: http://www.cp-union.org/cms/?q=node/72

FOSS Seminar in University of Makati

Mahigit sa 100 mag-aaral ng University of Makati ang nakinig sa Introductory Seminar ng Computer Professionals' Union (CPU) tungkol sa Free and Open Source Software. Ang seminar ay bahagi nang naganap na isang linggong selebrasyon (Dec 10-14) ng College of Computer Science inorganisa ng Computer Society .

Nagsimula kame sa pagpapakilala ng CPU (karamihan sa mga impormasyon ay mababasa rin sa website). Ipinakita ng CPU ang ilan nitong mga proyekto lalo na ang karapatan-monitor. Layunin din ng seminar na makapanghikayat ng volunteers para sa nasabing free software project.

Ipinaliwanag sa mga dumalo ang Free software philosophy. Pinalalim ang diskusyon sa pagbabanggit ng pagtutol sa software patents at iba pang panukala ng WTO sa IPR.

Ang mga dumalo ay dinala sa isang demonstration ng mga software na kabilang sa core install ng Ubuntu Gnu/Linux. Ipinaliwanag ang kaibahan ng software na openoffice.org, gimp, firefox, wine sa mga proprietary counterparts ng mga ito.

Lalo silang namangha sa 3d desktop effects na hindi magagawa sa bagong OS ng Microsoft kung kapos ang hardware ng gagamit.

Free human rights monitoring software released

COMPUTER PROFESSIONALS UNION
P.O. Box 268, Araneta Center, Cubao, Quezon City
info@cp-union.org http://www.cp-union.org

PRESS RELEASE: 10 December 2007

Free human rights monitoring software released
karapatan-monitor toolkit to document and generate reports of violations

Reference: Rick Bahague, Research Head
Contact: 09178840096, rbahaguejr@gmail.com

All possible ways to stop extrajudicial killings and other forms of human rights violations should be available and freely accessible for those who need to use it, said the Computer Professionals Union (CPU) as they released a free and open source set of tools to help human rights organizations in documentation, monitoring and awareness campaigns.

"As part of our work as responsible Computer Professionals, we are releasing this toolkit as free software on the celebration of International Human Rights Day," said Rick Bahague of the CPU. CPU is a volunteer-based organization of programmers, developers, system administrators and other professionals in the IT industry.

CPU has prepared a repository of this toolkit at code.google.com, an online repository sponsored by Google. The project is called karapatan-monitor ( http://code.google.com/p/karapatan-monitor/). It records incidents of human rights violation and victims.

The karapatan-monitor toolkit will help organize documentation, incident reports, and generate reports for users. Human rights violations are classified based on a taxonomy or categories defined by the deploying organization and perpetrators of these violations are linked to specific incidents. This toolkit will be released in GNU General Public License (GPL) version 3 in the hope that it can be useful to many human rights and non-governmental organizations not only in the Philippines. The GNU GPL allows redistribution and modification of software in contrast to very restrictive proprietary counterpart.

"CPU is one of the leading advocate of Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) in the country. With the availability of karapatan-monitor, we are again showing how to lead not only in advocacy but also in FOSS development for people's organizations and non-profit institutions in the Philippines," Bahague added. CPU has been active in supporting the FOSS Bill in the Philippine Congress.

CPU has been training organizations in using and deploying Drupal Content Management System (Drupal CMS). The use of Drupal CMS helps human rights organizations create online awareness campaigns in less than a day. The launching of www.karapatan.org, an online portal of the Alliance for the Advancement of People's Rights and www.stopthekillings.org, an online campaign to stop extrajudicial killings in the Philippines, are showcases of these deployments. The online portals are collaborations between CPU volunteers and recipient organizations.

"These CPU projects prove that FOSS is a viable replacement even for very specific tools of non-governmental organizations," Bahague emphasized. "The toolkit is also our small tribute to many human rights violation victims of the current regime as reported by Prof. Philip Alston recently."


Portals

A portal of Alliance for the Advancement of People's Rights can be found at http://www.karapatan.org .

An online campaign to stop extrajudicial killings in the Philippines can be found at http://www.stopthekillings.org

Information about Computer Professionals' Union and its projects can be found at http://www.cp-union.org

Project sites:

Drupal CMS: http://www.drupal.org

karapatan-monitor: http://code.google.com/p/karapatan-monitor/ .
Videos to guide users in installations and operations are already posted here. Source codes will be uploaded on this site before the end of the year. For testing and demonstrations please contact Rick Bahague.