LINUXCOVERCOMMUNITY USERSTORY SchlagwortSchlagwortBrave GNU sollte Worldsollte hier hier stehen stehen Schlagwort sollte hier stehen COVER STORY

The Monthly GNU Column BRAVE GNU WORLD

This column looks into projects and current affairs in the world of free software from the perspective of the GNU Project and the FSF. In this issue, we focus on mind maps and the demand for free software at the European Com- mission’s 6th Framework Program.

BY GEORG C.F. GREVE

ind mapping involves studying mind mapping applications, such as But how does a become a relationships among various View Your Mind (vym) or Freemind [3], book? Enter the document generator, Mterms and thoughts, and visu- KDissert uses mind maps to generate which manages the mind map sections alizing those relationships to provide a documents. and composes a document from them. better overview. Thus, a mind map These documents are built from the Of course, this means enumerating the reflects a very personal and specific individual elements on a card. Although individual components, which is not view of the person who created it. the complete framework gives users a typical of a mind map. For this reason, visible overview, the tool gradually documents can always be viewed as tree KDissert builds up a natural internal structure, diagrams that link the individual compo- If you are interested in learning more which grows as if it has a life of its own. nents. about the underlying techniques and Thanks to its extremely intuitive GUI, There are nine very different output concepts of mind mapping, the Wikipe- KDissert is easy to learn. In fact, half an formats. Documents can be output as entry at [1] is certainly a big help. hour should be quite sufficient to master websites, applets, Latex books or Kdissert creator Thomas Nagy takes the basic operations. articles, presentations in Prosper and mind mapping a step farther with his Mind maps are always composed of Beamer format, as Impress or Writer contribution: in contrast to classical graphically linked nodes, and KDissert is documents for Open Office, or as text no exception (Figure 1). Each node in files. This helps users quickly find the Comments & Suggestions KDissert represents a structural level right format for their work. The email address column@brave-gnu- within a document; this level can be a Thomas Nagy sees education as one of world.org is available for your com- chapter, a section, a subsection, an the major fields of application for KDis- ments on and suggestions to Brave image, and so on. Within the mind map, sert, and he specifically refers to stu- GNU World. The GNU project homep- the font type, font size and color, dents. But he also views teachers, scien- age is at http://www.gnu.org. Georg’s images, and bullets help to identify tists, engineers, and business people as “Brave GNU World” column is available nodes. More font types and bullets are potential users. The fields of application online at http://brave-gnu-world.org available for text within individual range from traditional student work and the “We run GNU” initiative has a nodes, including comments and links to through to project management. website at: http://www.gnu.org/brave- external documents or Internet pages As is so often the case, the develop- gnu-world/rungnu/rungnu.de.html (Figure 2.) ment work was driven by Thomas’ own

92 ISSUE 58 SEPTEMBER 2005 WWW.LINUX - MAGAZINE.COM Schlagwort Bravesollte GNUhier stehen World COVER STORY

the free software project will be given priority. As a result, the number of registered free projects has grown dramatically. As regards sustainable investments, this is a very good thing, however, many of the projects suffer from typical side effects of European business: inefficiency, incompetence, and egocentricity. Despite the free software label, not all projects actually produce free software, and often projects are founded simply to milk the cash cow. Even though a project might fail, those responsible for it will still pro- claim their success, thus bluffing their way into the next round of subsidies. The disillusioning business model that some institutes and enterprises follow has been a part of scientific and techno- logical promotion for many years now. Unfortunately, the European Commis- sion’s move to subsidize free software Figure 1: The KDissert mind mapping tool helps users organize complex topics and addition- is no exception; many developers who ally allows users to generate documents from their maps. applied for grants on the basis of realis- tic and well-founded projects, and were personal requirements. Thomas’ work scope of its framework program. Some turned down, are justifiably annoyed. involved mind maps, but he couldn’t 3.625 billion Euros will be devoted to But how can we put and end to the mud- find a tool to convert mind maps to doc- Information Society Technologies (IST) bath? uments. This prompted him to start throughout the duration of the sixth work on programming KDissert back in framework program [6]. Thanks to an Building Consortiums 2003. While working on the project, initiative launched by the Free Software The first sign of a solution to the prob- Thomas decided to integrate the tool Foundation Europe (FSFE) in March lem was to restrict grant applications to with the KDE desktop, which made 2002 [7], these funds will mainly be groups. Individual entities are not enti- C++ the obvious choice of program- available for free software. If two compa- tled to apply for grants from the pro- ming language. Thomas opted for Bksys rable projects are competing for support, gram. The funds are aimed at European [4] as the build system; this was a good choice for Thomas, as it implements Scons [5] for KDE. Scons replaces tradi- tional makefiles with a Python-based build system. In contrast to traditional approaches, this simplifies the extremely complex requirements for building a KDE application placed on developers. Of course, as a KDE application, KDis- sert gives users all the freedom of the General Public License (GPL). Although the KDissert source code is relatively young, according to the author, it is very mature and stable. Lots of useful exten- sions for the tool come to mind, but, as Thomas does not have time to author them himself, a bit of proactive involve- ment would not be amiss, if you have the time and skills. Framework Program Talking of being proactive: the European Commission is actively promoting Euro- Figure 2: The KDissert mind mapping tool provides a variety of styles that use colors or bul- pean science and business within the lets to distinguish between text sections and nodes.

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ing the project shops in Brussels, some of which are direction? open, and others by invitation only. The The FSFE can participants are expected to bear the help in this case: costs themselves, and there is no com- projects can seek pensation for time lost. That’s a pity, partners via the because who has the time and money to mailing list at [8] visit all these events in Brussels? and talk directly to The level of competence of some con- provide orientation. tributions to these workshops is worry- If the project is a ing. People refer to Linux 8.0 and to the well-founded effort, fact that Linux is available under the the FSFE might GNU License or from Red Hat. People even get involved think that the GNU GPL is only valid as a partner. More within the USA and Germany, and there than one consor- are justifiable calls for a competence tium has incorrectly center that people could call for more Figure 3: While José Manuel Barroso, the President of the European stated that the FSFE details. At least we can help out there: Commission, is fighting for a common constitution for all EU mem- was involved, so the Free Software Foundation Europe’s ber states, the members of the community devoted their time to you might like to phone number is +49 700 FSFEUROPE. promoting software projects in executive committees. verify statements like this by talking Being Proactive integration, and this means that so- to the FSFE. We need more good software projects, called consortiums of at least five inde- more evaluators with knowledge of free pendent partners from at least three Evaluation software, and more people willing to get countries are required to apply. The second step towards funding is eval- involved at the Commission level. All of There are three things that partners uation. Randomly selected experts these possibilities are open to anyone. within a consortium can’t afford to review the entries and evaluate them on You do not need to belong to an organi- ignore: first, a project can take several the basis of pre-defined schematics. But zation to be an evaluator. If you are years. Second, if a major partner quits, what is an expert? Basically, this can be interested in working as an evaluator this can mean the end of the consortium, anybody who applies online at [9] and and are not actively involved in a proj- and third, the consortium is given the has the necessary skills. Although the ect, maybe you can do something on the funds as a group, and it is left up to the notes that accompany the application political scene. Our initiative decides group members to allocate funds as they form state that special skills in the appli- what kind of Europe we will live in. ■ deem appropriate. cable fields are the major requirement After signing a contract with the Euro- for a successful application, my experi- INFO pean Commission, partners are closely ence with Brussels-style Eurocracy leads [1] Wikipedia entry on mind maps: tethered for quite a while. People me to expect that an academic title http:// en. wikipedia. org/ wiki/ Mindmap involved in free software projects really might be a big help towards getting on [2] Kdissert: http:// freehackers. org/ need to ignore the enticement of pur- to one of the boards. ~tnagy/ kdissert/ portedly easy money and take a good The evaluation process decides which [3] Freemind: look at the other partners within the projects will be receiving funds. It http:// . . net/ wiki/ consortium. Are they really interested in decides whether money will be put to index. php/ Main_Page free software, or did they suddenly dis- good use or wasted. The more members [4] Bksys: http:// www. kde-apps. org/ cover their passion for free software after of the free software community that reg- content/ show. php?content=19243 reading about the grants? Another less ister as experts, the better the chances obvious question is, does the consortium are for good projects to meet with com- [5] Scons: http:// www. scons. org have at least one partner capable of giv- petent evaluators. [6] 6th EU Framework Program: The European Commission coordi- http:// fp6. cordis. lu/ fp6 Georg C. F. Greve nates the whole framework program at a [7] FSFE activities on the Framework Dipl.-Phys. has been political level. This includes decisions on Program: http:// fsfeurope. org/ using free software projects/ fp6/ fp6. en. html for many years. He strategic targets, or so-called calls, that was an early adopter is, precisely coordinated requests for [8] FSFE mailing list for the 6th EU of GNU/Linux. After projects concerned with specific topics. Framework Program: http:// mail. becoming active in An appropriate call is another prerequi- fsfeurope. org/ mailman/ listinfo/ fp6 the GNU project he [9] Definition of requirements for formed the Free Software site for applying for funding. candidature as an expert on a Frame- Foundation Europe, of which he is Additionally, much of the Commis-

THEAUTHOR the current president. More sion’s political activity takes place work Program evaluation committee: http:// www. cordis. lu/ experts/ fp6_can- information can be found at within the IST division of the framework http://www.gnuhh.org. didature. htm program, mainly in the form of work-

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