Software Free

I needed a good way to explain software freedom to people who have little to no computer experience (possibly parents or grandparents, kids, stay-at-home moms/dads, etc.), so I created the following blog post. Many of these people could benefit from free software, but aren’t going to learn about it through mainstream media.

read more

"A company called Control Yourself, led by Evan Prodromou (who serves with me and many others on the FSF-endorsed Freedom for Network Services Committee) yesterday launched a site called identi.ca. It's a microblogging service similar to Twitter, but it is designed to respect the rights and freedoms of its users..." -- http://identi.ca/doc/source

«Clipperz and Richard Stallman recently launched a joint call for action to bring freedom and privacy to web applications. [...] Clipperz and RMS urge web developers to adopt the new AGPL license and build their applications using a 'zero-knowledge architecture,' a framework for web services that has been derived from Clipperz online password manager.

read more

With Independence Day coming up, I want to do a series of posts about freedom and what "free software" actually means. The English language is weak in the area of freedom, so when somebody says "free software" they think "free of charge" or "gratis" (to use the Latin term for the concept), which can really throw you, since most free software is available to anyone without monetary cost.

Saturday, in our trip to Cluj, after the presentation and the party ended we still had a few hours to spend, so we went to the Botanical Garden.

Close-up to a cactus

As the entrance, we had to pay a small tax, 4 RON (a little over 1 EUR) but to be allowed to take photos, an additional tax of 20 RON (or five times the entrance ticket) was needed. Figuring there is no way the tax is worth the amount of pictures we can take, we went tu put our cameras (4 of us had cameras) in the backpack.

As announced, a group of Romanian Fedora contributors went Saturday at an event organized in Cluj-Napoca by Grupul pentru Software Liber. Now it is the time for a [heavy] illustrated report of the event (even more photos [*] can be found in our photo gallery):

So, we leaved Bucharest Friday, with the night train:

We are going to Cluj-Napoca this Saturday! Grupul pentru software liber (the Group for Free Software) organized an event, held at the Babes - Bolyai University and we, the Romanian Fedora team are going to talk (in front of what I expect to be an Ubuntu predominant audience, so keep your fingers crossed for us to return alive).

a poster for the event,
greatly influenced by Mo's work

CivicActions is proud to present our latest collaborative project, which launched today... Women's Funding Network.

Our team completed the Drupal development work on this site, in partnership with The Communication Group, and our old friend and former CivicActions colleague, Karyn Gladstone.

read more

–

## In this issue
* New FSF store
* Farewell Justin, Hello Danny
* DRM elimination crew at the Apple Store launch
* Savannah adds Subversion, Mercurial
* Freedom and privacy in the cloud: a call for action
* Boycott Windows Media Center!
* GNU Spotlight with Karl Berry
* Richard Stallman's speaking schedule and other FSF speeches
* Take Action with the FSF

RMS: «The GNU system (often called "Linux") has been developed, since 1984, for the sake of computer users' freedom. Ironically it is now the basis for a system designed to smother the freedom of the people of London, through online payments to Oyster cards. [...]»

"...I have been unwilling to get involved with this debate [which is currently in progress on Manchester Free Software Group's mailing list] from an argumentative perspective, because it seems to me that the whole debate revolves around a perception of gNewSense and in general, not experience.

[...]

read more

According to Gianpiero Morbello Acer, Acer's VP of Marketing and Brand:

"We have shifted towards Linux because of Microsoft. "

Dr. Phatak's anguish and his vigorous defense of IIT Bombay reminds all of us that none of our freedoms were easily won, and that if we do not protect them, they may be easily lost or traded for small money that will cost us dearly in the long run. The best way to celebrate the courage of Dr.

read more

"We’ve just added the seal you see at right to Creative Commons licenses that qualify as Free Culture Licenses according to the Definition of Free Cultural Works — Attribution and Attribution-ShareAlike. Public domain is not a license, but is an acceptable copyright status for free cultural works according to the Definition.

read more

"This is a post about freedom. The freedom to keep your data for yourself and the freedom to run free software. You should be able to reclaim and enjoy these freedoms also when using web applications. [...] Let me be clear: web apps are great and I’m in love with them. But I think it’s time to ask for more freedom and more privacy. Here is a three step plan to achieve both these results..."