Coming from somebody that is involved a lot in social media, I recognize it is strange to say it, but still… we should not be drowned by it.

Fastening from media in general – that is an interesting idea indeed. We all should exercise it for time to time. What you have to do is to avoid opening at any cost the browser, the newspaper, the radio or the TV. Nor read any commercial or written word pushed to your eyes. Only your own thoughts. And surprise! You will realize after a few days how far you are disconnected from your own being.

And did I mention? – stop for a while to look into your smartphones and tablets, stop listening to the gagas and just look on the window. You may discover the real world around you.

Back to this blog… Well, for now, I’m still going to keep it. I started it because of eLiberatica. After a while, I thought that helping with my part to the so called "social media awareness" can change the way we think and behave, in the good way. After more time, I learned that is actually only a tool in which individuals and organizations try to influence the others. Can be for good or bad.. So be carefully how and what are you listening to.
The way to change things for good must not rely solely on a tool. It is more about us – to stay in touch with our own being and with the others, at e personal and intimate level. And this is where computers and Internet cannot do much help. There are more important things in life. Which is short indeed.

Now, here are some things I consider deserves to be shared with you; things that I found interesting along this year:

• Movies: Melancholia (2011) – which I found more profound than Three of Life (2011); Hereafter (2010) – you have to see it. And some more – in no particular order: The Robber (2010), Margin Call (2011), Farewell (2009), Day of the Wacko (2002), The Man from Earth (2007), Cashback (2006), The Virgin Suicides (1999), The Fighter (2010), Black Swan (2010), Anonyma (2008), The Tunnel (2001), The American (2010), The Joneses (2009), The Soloist (2009). There would be more, but since this is not a cinema blog, I stop here ;)
• Fiction Books: Noaptea de Sanziene (The Forbidden Forest), by Mircea Eliade – a timeless and magic story, I strongly recommend it (I cannot believe is having no review on Wikipedia…).
• Audiobooks: Confucius, Buddha, Jesus, and Muhammad – by The Teaching Company, extremely interesting.
• Non-fiction Books: SuperFreakonomics and Outliers (not new, but good).
• Music: I felt in love with Cesaria Evora, Amalia Rodrigues, Dulce Pontes, and fado in general.

For the ones asking about eLiberatica. No plans for 2012, sorry. I will consider 2013, if, hopefully, I can find the time, the mood, and in general, if the general economic downturn will cease…

Professionally speaking? I’m continuing to push CapturePlay – the company I’m working for. From my personal point of view, one of the most important achievements this year is the internship program, which I setup it there with the help of a few Canadian immigration organizations. It makes you feel good when you can help others to succeed, and they help you back to build your product.
Generally speaking, since one year ago CapturePlay’s Alexa ranking was somewhere around 24,000,000 and now is around 340,000 that is confirming we did a lot towards achieving success.

In general, this year was tough… My father passed away… I finally started to publish his work.
So yes, it was tough again, but also enlightening. It refocused my mind to the most essential meanings of life; people we love, family and time; doing best you can to be human, to be good.

For the friends who are interested, there are some pictures from 2011.

OK, I think that is all for now, and for this year.

Looking forward for 2012.

"Life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you’re gonna get."

I wish you all a Happy New Year, peace, love, prosperity and happiness!

He left this world suddenly on April 8th 2011 at the age of 74. In his lifetime – since his twenties, he painted over one thousand of paintings. The most intense period was in the latest years of his life.

Being my Father, I may be subjective in judging his work. However, in speaking with his colleagues and friends, as well as art critics who attended the funerals, I realized I have a responsibility to publicize his work.

Perhaps his life story, which is an interesting one, has a bearing on this; however, more about this at a later time eventually.

About ten years ago, I had set up a website for his work (http://www.savluc.com/boris).

I didn’t touch it since then, and now is outdated. Therefore we plan to re-build and re-launch it.

In the meantime, we will publish almost daily one of his paintings under different social media outlets. There are hundreds; this will take a few years. We also hope the private owners or organizations that own his paintings, will contribute to it and send us images to be published.

We plan to publish much of his artwork under a Creative Common license, and allow use of his artwork freely, in so far as his paintings would be credited.

We believe this is his final will – to share his art with you, to make this world more colorful and to add to its beauty.

You can follow his published work at:

Twitter: @BorisSavluc

Facebook: Boris Savluc In Memoriam

Flickr: photos/borissavluc

We will continue to keep you updated about this project.

Last but not least:

If you feel a bit of pleasure while looking at his paintings, please let others know about it.

Boris Savluc is not Dead; he is Alive through his Art.

The eLiberatica conferences: 2007, 2008, 2009.

We could not secure finances to organize a high class and high quality conferences like the ones we used to have. I had partnered with Agora for the first three conferences – they were generous with their finances; however, they were unable to sponsor the costs this year.

Some of you had asked me to organize a smaller scale one this time. I would like to thank everyone for their support and proposals; I am very enchanted and grateful for the interest out there. As I mentioned many times, eLiberatica is very costly and it is not enough to say “…come to our town, we have secured a space, we can party, let’s have eLiberatica here…”

If you wish to invite high-profile speakers from around the world, the cost of transportation, venue, etc have to be met. It costs tens of thousands of Euros to hold an eLiberatica conference.. Regardless of those who suggested that a FLOSS conference should be gratis, sponsors are still needed.

I also tried to enter into partnerships with a few other organizations, which meet our moral caliber and high standards; unfortunately, for whatever reasons (let’s blame the recession), they did not come through. I am quite disappointed; perhaps they will be able to assist at a later date.

Last but not least organizing the last three eLiberatica conferences took a huge toll on me, with lots of effort, in between working full-time. I took on this responsibility like a second full-time job, except that it was a volunteer commitment… It cost me time which I would have spent with my family and in general, enjoying life. I don’t know many people who would take on this type of responsibility; if I did I would donate the eLiberatica brand to them.

I still believe that the best value of this conference is the fact we stood independently; we never favored any one group. When I say that, I am referring to both Open Source and Free Software – which I see as a single movement (a response to this article). I am also saying this comparing it to the other side named “closed source” – which I clearly understand its role in the economy. We are living in a complex world which is not perfect and never will be, but we can work toward making it better.

So one way or other, I think all of us are at loss because there will be no eLiberatica this year . . . No new stories, no disputes, no debates. Silence. Ah, there are some who would enjoy it for sure.

This being said, I hope the FLOSS community in Romania will continue to organize events and I hope they can make a stand. Not much is to be expected from the government, though, but I expect some from the local business people who must understand – in Romania the single opportunity is to go with Open Source and Free Software. With regard to the government, I hope that EU would push FLOSS harder at the union level.

Some advice for the IT people in Romania, especially the youngest: If you want a good future, you wish for independence, wanting to grow – learn Linux first; learn the free and open languages and standards, not the closed ones. If you want a better life, it is in your power to influence it.

I am confident that there will be better times, and we will once again have eLiberatica. The project is not dead at all but, like the Firebird, will come back to life.

A few days and the year is gone… farewell, 2010, welcome 2011!
I know, I wrote so rare this year. The time is flying faster and faster. There are many things that happened. In my life and in general.
It was a tough year, we lost people we love. But I don’t like to talk in public about family. Family is something special for me so I like to keep it private. I suppose I’m not the standard Facebook guy..

So let’s see, what about other things. For example my lessons to fly – covered in my last post. It was fun for a few months to do consultancy. I learned that is not exactly for me. I’m kind of a perfectionist, I like to focus on long term projects where you can build. Doing consultancy is not exactly building strong. Is more a kind of a mercenary thing. You do whatever they ask, you don’t care for long term. You don’t build, you deliver in time and budget ;) Now you should not understand I’m not doing consultancy anymore. I still have the consultancy business and when I have time and I like the project, I’m taking jobs. But definitely, I like long term involvement. Only in time you can really build true values.
To make it short, my last clients, at the end of August, offered me a position I couldn’t reject (hence my consultancy work proved to be successful ;). Many asked who are these people. I liked to keep it kind of a private for now. We are in stealth mode. The company is small but is having a lot of potential and I’m thrilled to help them. The position I took is Director, Web Marketing and Customer Experience (I didn’t update my LinkedIn profile yet). This means I touch almost all departments. Which is good. I can help them to build strong. And is long term. And we will have results. I learned a lot at BasicGov. Now I’m going forward, my experience more than doubled. I’ll come later with a separate article about what we try to do.

eLiberatica – probably the most important subject the readers of this blog are looking for. We will try to do it again. Is tough, the times are not favouring it; Romania is in an economical downturn. The entire world actually is like that. On the other side, the times are asking for more of these actions. Is a whole need toward openness. We are learning that technology changes politics and our own live. Look at Wikileaks scandal. An entire world divided. Look at Internet and what some are trying to do. Where are we going to be in 10 years from now?
I would say eLiberatica and events like it are necessary now more than ever. Facts? I’m doing my best to help Agora to gain the power to organize together again. I also have a few other proposals, with other open source organizations from Romania. We will see. Is not only about that, is about me too; can I sacrifice this time again – take it from sharing it with my family and donated it for this cause? Is it worth? I hope so. Sometimes I think Romanians are their own worst enemies. But perhaps this things are not definitely. There are still many good people there.

About me and Canada. More time is passing, more I love this country. It is amazing how people from so many parts can leave together in peace. Is the proof this is possible. I met here great people from all over the world. I also met or read about really bad things. Drugs, killings, and so on. There is no perfect place. The most important is to feel home and safe. My heart is still in Romania, but I start to feel home here. Strange.

Wish you all Merry Christmas and A Happy New Year.

PS – I rarely write on this blog, but I twitt daily. If you wish to keep in touch, you find me there http://twitter.com/LucianSavluc

-

Below, some bits of 2010…

DrupalCamp Romania / Timisoara is the first major local Drupal event in Romania, and as far as I see, one of the most well prepared events of this kind taking place in the country on 2010.

A few weeks ago I talked to people at Mozilla about a close collaboration and partnership for eLiberatica 2011.
Along it, Drupal Romania is next on the list. I hope that by autumn/winter we can add the majority of FLOSS Romanian communities.
eLiberatica 2011 should be a celebration and a culmination of the other three editions.

I hope you will take this chance and help DrupalCamp and participate if possible ( is free) , even if you are using other content management systems.
Actually this is the whole idea – which I keep to repeat it: to know each other, to help each other and to build a better IT environment in that region of the world.

For the ones who don’t know what is FLOSS (I’ll continue to use this term instead of FOSS because is clearly defining what “free” means in this case- free = libre) Wikipedia is explaining it clear:

“Free and open source software, also F/OSS, FOSS, or FLOSS (free/libre/open source software) is software that is liberally licensed to grant the right of users to study, change, and improve its design through the availability of its source code. This approach has gained both momentum and acceptance as the potential benefits have been increasingly recognized by both individuals and corporate players.” …read more on Wikipedia.

Dan, I appreciate your comments and your opinions, and you may be right from some angles. I’ll give you a single example I already gave it a few years ago, when we allowed Microsoft to sponsor the event first time: please take a look at the biggest Open Source conference in the world, OSCON http://www.oscon.com/oscon2009, and tell me what you see on top right? Did the fact they allowed Microsoft to sponsor diluted their message and involvement in promoting FLOSS? No. Is somebody criticizing Tim O’Reilly for it? I don’t think so.

We should understand that both FLOSS and closed source models are going to coexist for many-many years from now. I don’t want eLiberatica to be perceived like an extreme FLOSS event, where we invite only the “pure” FLOSS organizations. eLiberatica should be an event where bright IT professionals with different opinions will come and talk in a civilized mode, exchange ideas and gain value.

I’m not afraid at all that Microsoft speakers will influence FLOSS enthusiast and twist their minds, or they will confuse the neutrals or non-decided ones. Why? Because even if Microsoft is paying big bucks for smart and well-prepared professionals, first – they are not right, and last – these speakers will always lack passion. You cannot buy passion. Besides this, each time we were careful to invite at least a few very bright and exceptional FLOSS representatives that put light there, showing where Microsoft is wrong even if Microsoft speakers pretend they love FLOSS.

I totally agree with you that Microsoft will try hard to slow down FLOSS adoption. But making the rest of the people (I mean the non-FLOSS enthusiast, or the ones that are not aware) thinking that FLOSS is an IT extremist movement, is more dangerous that trying to talk and influence Microsoft. Of course, Microsoft will not change if we talk to them (they will change when their marked will shrink and they will fill the pain in the pockets).
But I know who will change – the undecided. The people who don’t know much about the issue. And even the ones who are Microsoft users. They will see that FLOSS people are open-minded, they are not fanatics, and they are in fact the ones that should be followed. That is my feeling.

Last but not least, please believe me that I would like to have no sponsors if it would be possible. I would like to be rich enough to organize this conference (which is a really expensive one) without the need of any financial support. That is in an ideal world.

Come at eLiberatica; if you will see any favored sponsor or the fact we allow them to manipulate the listeners in any wrong way, then you should let me know and I’ll put ashes in my head.

(PS – I apologies, but I’ll be with limited internet access until first of March, so I might not respond until then to any other comments.)

“This is a translation of the original Romanian article, published on February 11^th, 2010 by Capital Online magazine.

The Romanian Communications Ministry will pay EUR 90.18 million (including VAT) for the right to use 163,427 Microsoft licenses – for around 30 public agencies, including some ministries. The payment will be done in nine equal batches, until 2012.

The provider of the right to use the licenses is the business association between D-Con.Net AG, D-Con.Net GmbH, Comsoft Direct AG, Bechtle Holding Schweiz AG, Dim Soft SRL and Microsoft Romania, the only provider that participated to the bidding organized by the Ministry of Communications and Information Society (MCSI) in July 2009.
The contract was signed a month later.
The first batch of payment will be done during this year, according to MCSI data obtained by Mediafax.
“For the acquisition of rights of use, the manufacturer will provide a number of minimum 50,000 hours of consultancy and support, at no cost (…). These hours will be used by the purchasing public agencies (…). The provider will offer these consultancy hours during the entire period of the framework contract, establishing in each subsequent contract the number of hours that are necessary“, says the bidding specification.
According to Government’s Order 460/2009, the act in which the Government mandates MCSI to held the public bidding, the majority of computers and servers that get those licenses belongs to Ministry of Internal Affairs – 43,417, Justice – 25,247, Public Finances – 20,395, National Defense – 17,733, Public Health – 13,348 and Agriculture – 9,554.
In 2004, the Romanian Government and Microsoft signed a contract that stipulated using the products of the American company for five years. The clauses stipulated the use of about 50,000 Microsoft licenses for 54 million USD – that have been already paid.
Together with the amounts that were to be paid in 2009, totalizing $57.86 million, the value of the 2004 contract arrived at $111.86 millions.
Microsoft is the biggest international software manufacturer.

SOURCE: Mediafax“

Last year at eLiberatica, we raised some questions about this contract. Of course, without any result… At least, the world should know. And spread the word. Here is the link to eWEEK article Romania Issues €100 Million To Microsoft Without Bids.

A few days ago, I met Zak for a beer, as we do usually to catch up with each other. Coincidentally, we realized that 4 years ago, almost the same day – in a night of December 2005, the idea of organizing a FLOSS event in Romania was born. How the time fly!

Many things happened in the meantime. The good – eLiberatica run three editions and reached 400 participants this year. High profile Open Source and Free Software activists, developers and enthusiasts came to Romania and presented their ideas, shared stories and expertise, made new friends, learned about our culture. The Romanian FLOSS community members gain something; they met each other in person, they shared ideas, they learned new things; new events and communities were developed. Although the Romanian FLOSS community is not united as I dreamt when I started, still, eLiberatica did something: it made it clear that Romanians are having a FLOSS community. It put it on the FLOSS World Map. It also attracted the government and media attention and most of all, the Romanian public attention; and the FLOSS international community attention to Romania. Many Romanians who had no idea about what Open Source and Free Software means, now learned.

Is this something? I don’t know, you judge, and the time will tell. There is still a lot to do, but it is a start.

eLiberatica 4^th edition

Back these days: people are asking me what’s next, and especially about eLiberatica 4^th edition. I can come now with a clear answer:

eLiberatica 2010 – unfortunately no…
eLiberatica 2011 – YES!

There are important factors making a 2010 edition hard to develop: on my side – I have to spend more time with my family, and to focus on my actual job. Zak is in a similar situation. Both of us spent many-many days and nights preparing and managing the previous three editions and volunteering for the community; now we should turn back to our families, they need us. The times are harsh too; there is a lot of political uncertainty and economical turmoil in Romania these days. We hope this will change in good in the next year…

Therefore, although Romi (Agora CEO – our partners we had in the first 3 editions) made me the offer to collaborate again in organizing eLiberatica, I had to say no this time.
Both Zak and I decided to go again together and prepare a big one – but only in 2011.

On the other hand, Romi mentioned to me that Agora would like to organize a local Open Source event in the spring of 2010, which I think is fain. Anyway, please note, this event is not going to be supported by Zak, and me, nor will be eLiberatica. On the other hand, I’m glad to see eLiberatica is not the single FLOSS event taking place in Romania now. A few are on the track and I hope we share our part in generating it.

I will be always supporting the FLOSS movement in Romania and, generally speaking – ROMANIA. Although Canada is now my country, and I love it and respect it, I’ll never forget where I came from. So if is anything I can help there, and is in my power, you let me know.

Related to eLiberatica 4^th edition – I’ll continue to keep communication up; I’m open to any suggestions, so please stay in touch with me. I updated my blog, I’ll tune it up even more, and I’ll start to rearrange the eLiberatica websites, unifying it in a single one and preparing it for 2011. I estimate we will start to work for organizing the next edition probably the summer of 2010. In 2011, we wish to have the best FLOSS event ever in Romania.

A New Year

These being said, I wish all of you Merry Christmas and A Happy New Year!
It was an honor and a pleasure to be with you in all these 4 years, and I hope to be again together soon.

Btw: Romanian translation was provided by Ceata members; many thanks for it especially to Tibi Turbureanu.

Feel free to spread the word and share the content below:

WWW.HELPMYSQL.ORG LAUNCHED: MULTILINGUAL CAMPAIGN AND WORLDWIDE CALL TO SAVE MYSQL FROM ORACLE

Online petition to oppose Oracle’s takeover of MySQL and its recent set of MySQL-related “empty promises” — Campaign vows to “keep gathering support until the very end of the process” — First of several deliveries of signatures to regulators will take place on Monday, January 4 — “The community that made MySQL popular and strong can now help to keep it free and alive” — Started in 12 language versions, “several more to be added shortly”

Brussels, Belgium, 28 December 2009 — Oracle’s takeover of Sun encounters a formidable challenge on the Internet, two weeks after Oracle claimed to be close to obtaining approval by the European Commission and other regulators. Michael ‘Monty’ Widenius, MySQL’s creator and founder, launched a web campaign, www.helpmysql.org, in (initially) 12 languages, collecting signatures for a worldwide petition against the deal in its present form.

The campaign vows to “keep gathering support until the very end of the process” and says the petition will firstly be delivered on January 4, with subsequent deliveries of signatures received later to take place as well. The petition will be presented to “regulators [including but not limited to the European Commission], other governmental agencies, parliaments and [...] news agencies”. The petition text asks “competition authorities around the world to block Oracle’s acquisition of Sun” unless one of the solutions that the signatories of the petition can select is put in place. Those possibilities include a divestiture of MySQL to a suitable third party, a so-called “linking exception” and releasing MySQL (all past versions and the ones released over the next three years) under the Apache Software License 2.0, an open source license.

The petition states that Oracle’s recent MySQL-related promises “can at best have a transitional effect (if any) but cannot ensure true innovation related to MySQL and safeguard MySQL as a major competitive force.” Widenius had previously dismissed them as “empty promises” (http://monty-says.blogspot.com/2009/12/oracle-gives-only-empty-promises-for.html).

The petition expresses the belief that “Oracle, if it acquired Sun’s MySQL, would have a fundamental conflict of interests between MySQL (and its different editions and storage engines) on the one hand and Oracle’s high-priced products on the other hand.” The text also highlights “the fundamental importance of databases to the knowledge-based economy”.

Widenius said that the purpose of www.helpmysql.org is to let the MySQL community influence the outcome of the process: “The community that made MySQL popular and strong can now help to keep it free and alive. I thank all MySQL users who have already supported our efforts and are going to support them at such a critical point in time, and I want to thank the many volunteers who helped us pull this campaign off in so little time even during the Holiday Season.”

On his blog (http://monty-says.blogspot.com/2009/12/help-keep-internet-free.html), Widenius today published a detailed explanation of his perspective on the merger case, also seeking to clarify his personal motivation to lead this fight. Two weeks ago, Widenius already called on the MySQL community to send emails to the European Commission. The petition also asks those who already wrote to the EC to participate again, as the petition “will be presented in different parts of the world and generally have an effect that goes beyond direct messages to any particular regulator.”

The www.helpmysql.org campaign is initially available in English, Chinese, Russian, French, German, Spanish, Dutch, Romanian, Hungarian, Swedish, Latvian and Estonian. According to Florian Mueller, who cooperates closely with Widenius on this matter and has previously gathered massive support from the open source movement in connection with an EU decision (on software patents), the online petition is “a truly global effort”, but he declined to specify which particular regulators outside the EU would also receive it “since regulators in some other places wouldn’t like us to talk about such activities in public.” Within the EU, the petition will also be sent to the 27 national antitrust authorities of the bloc’s member countries, which will meet in Brussels in mid January to discuss the Oracle/Sun merger case.

Mueller said that “translations to several more languages will be added shortly to the campaign site”, including translations to Japanese, Portuguese, Italian, Polish and Greek.

About Michael ‘Monty’ Widenius and Monty Program Ab

Michael ‘Monty’ Widenius is the creator of MySQL, the world’s most popular open source database. He started to develop it in 1982. In 2001, he founded MySQL AB, which was acquired by Sun Microsystems in 2008 for a total consideration of approximately US$1 billion. The European Private Equity and Venture Capital Association (EVCA) named this transaction the “European Venture Capital Deal of the Year 2008″. On a previous occasion, Widenius had been named the Finnish Software Entrepreneur of the Year 2003.

In 2009, Widenius left Sun and created a new company, Monty Program Ab, based in Tuusula (Helsinki area), Finland. Monty Program Ab develops MariaDB, a branch of MySQL, and the Maria database storage engine and other MySQL-related technologies. The company is a founding member of the Open Database Alliance.

Monty Program Ab corporate website: http://askmonty.org

Michael Widenius’ blog: http://monty-says.blogspot.com/

About Florian Mueller

Florian Mueller is a software industry veteran with 24 years of experience as well as an award-winning EU policy strategist. Previously founder and CEO of a startup he sold to the Telefónica group, Mueller became in 2001 an adviser to MySQL’s then-CEO on corporate strategy and held shares in the company until its sale.

The Economist Group’s European Voice named Mueller the EU Campaigner of the Year 2005. Mueller was also named to thought leader rankings in intellectual property as well as information technology. He has also successfully worked on EU competition matters in connection with professional soccer.

Contact data: Florian Mueller

For further information concerning this news release, please contact Florian Mueller (phone: +49-171-2632226, email: florian.mueller.de82319@gmail.com).

There were some comments, especially one about BLUG*OS*CON – announcing that the organizers changed the copy of the event website – which now looks professionally. Thank you.

Back to technical side, I would like to share some findings; perhaps some of you would need in the future if you use WordPress. The older WP version used latin1 encoding. The new version (after 2.2) is using utf-8. This is why when I restored the db, somehow the encoding matched wrong and I had many weird characters in the copy. I tried first this plug-in – “UTF-8 Database Converter” but didn’t work well. Finally, this one did the work well: UTF-8 DB Converter.

I started this blog almost 4 years ago (I cannot believe it how time passed…) when I started eLiberatica and ROSI. After that, I didn’t touch it much, just publishing time to time. I think is time for an improvement, so in the next period I plan to do an update, a modern looking one, like the one I developed for my actual company. More announcements about eLiberatica will come in December or January.