Free Software Linux

"...Something else that hasn't changed is vendor's annoying, no, make that pathological mania for secrecy. Another gadget you can get is one to read and decipher the trouble codes emitted by your vehicle's engine. These have just a tiny bit of storage, so if you don't capture the information quickly it's lost, which makes diagnosing a transient problem ever so much fun. AdvertisementYour ad here! read more

– ## In this issue * It's not the Gates, it's the bars * Act on ACTA! * Fight the Canadian DMCA! * Rhapsody and Naxos go DRM free * Refusing Digital Monitoring Policies * 5 reasons to avoid iPhone 3G * autonomo.us activist group to focus on freedom in network services * identi.ca is autonomo.us * GNU spotlight with Karl Berry * Richard Stallman's speaking schedule * Take action! AdvertisementYour ad here!

"... While these environmental consequences alone are sufficient reason for many to reject Vista, the disposable computer mentality is a symptom of a larger problem—one that should concern all social activists. That problem is the dependency of activists on software owned and exclusively controlled by entities that design their software in ways directly opposed to grassroots social change. read more

"The 5 real reasons to avoid iPhone 3G: ** iPhone completely blocks free software. Developers must pay a tax to Apple, who becomes the sole authority over what can and can't be on everyone's phones. ** iPhone endorses and supports Digital Restrictions Management (DRM) technology. read more

To pay so much attention to Bill Gates' retirement is missing the point. What really matters is not Gates, nor Microsoft, but the unethical system of restrictions that Microsoft, like many other software companies, imposes on its customers.

In the last-post, I went through the most popular Firefox extensions and talked about whether they were good ideas or not. However, it seems that not a lot of people think about another side to this, i.e. what are your Firefox extensions licenced under?

"I read Negroponte's statement presenting the OLPC XO as a platform for Windows in the most ironic circumstances possible: during a week of preparing, under a deadline, to migrate personally to an XO. I made this decision for one specific reason: freedom..."

Microsoft turn to free software? That’ll be the day. Some have suggested that Microsoft might embrace free software and thus resolve the present conflict. That actually would be a terrific strategy for them, but I don’t think that Microsoft is smart enough to do it.

13 Up Down "...Marten Mickos has just acknowledge that I understood the slide quite correctly, and they will indeed develop new features in MySQL Enterprise (in 6.0), without making them available in MySQL Community. Hmm!"

"I attended an interesting talk by James Vasile of the Software Freedom Law Center earlier this week. The discussion focused on how the Free Software movement can now be regarded as a success and how others are now attempting to replicate this in other areas such as media (Creative Commons). read more

"Without fanfare (as expected), Microsoft filed its 10-K form to the Security and Exchange Commission. In it, however, we find that Microsoft bemoans the fact that their “business model,” well, might tend to suck..."

"Copyleft is a general method for making a program or other work free, and requiring all modified and extended versions of the program to be free as well. The simplest way to make a program free software is to put it in the public domain, uncopyrighted. This allows people to share the program and their improvements, if they are so minded. read more

Last week, Canonical, the commercial face of the Ubuntu GNU/Linux distribution, announced that it would be using its Partners repository to sell proprietary applications like Parallels Workstation. You can see the reasoning: Ubuntu's Debian technology already has the infrastructure for on-demand downloads and software installation, so why not monetize it?

"No matter how glib and sarcastic the proprietor, proprietary software denies users the freedoms to inspect, share, and modify the program. Users of Adobe’s proprietary Creative Suite software recently discovered that the program communicates over the network with a machine apparently owned by Omniture, a company that tracks web usage..."