Software Free

"As music, movies and books move further into the digital realm, the question of our freedoms being diminished was raised by Richard Stallman at Cambridge University on April 30th at his talk on 'Copyright vs Community'.

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"...On 26 june a prophet came to CERN. Complete with long hair and a bushy unkempt, Richard Stallman looked every bit the part. His message was software should be free. [...] The year that Stallman came to CERN, Tim had published a note in a CERN computing newsletter drawing the laboratarie's attention to GNU. [...] «When we speak of free software ... we are refrerring to freedom, not price».

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## In this issue
* Free Software Supporter exclusive: WBUR is streaming Ogg Vorbis!
* DBD Action Alert - Libraries: Eliminate DRM!
* Get DeltaH, gNewSense 2.0
* Get your next machine with gNewSense
* Silicon Mechanics to ship servers with free BIOS preinstalled
* Can we rescue OLPC from Windows? by Richard M. Stallman
* End Software Patents: the Bilski hearing, heard.

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"Why should we care to have a 100 per cent free operating system? Isn't being almost free enough? Not if you value freedom itself.

The Free Software Movement was founded to win freedom for software users. Its offshoot, Open Source, was founded to downplay freedom as a value. This difference, which may seem subtle, has big consequences and this is one example of them..."

RMS: «The EFF is fighting an attempt to twist copyright law to give the software developer total power over execution of the program. Victory in this case will not eliminate the practice of restricting how users run proprietary programs. It will only limit the developers to using contracts as the means. This will not make users free.

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"The primary mission of GNU is freedom and social solidarity. We seek to help computer users by giving them software that respects their freedom and their community, so as to put an end to the practice of using proprietary software, which tramples both..."

"In 1984, Richard Stallman founded a social movement known as the free software movement. The free software movement fights for the ability to control our computers as a cooperative community (as opposed to being under the rule of software proprietors where users have only as much control over their computers as the proprietor allows).

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"Skype fought the GPL and the GPL won. The OLPC XO project abandons free software just as RMS switches to an XO; RMS not happy. New monthly newsletters from the FSF and FSFE. GNOME and KDE want to have a joint development conference in 2009. GNOME and GCC conferences coming up later this year. Plus all the usual news: more GPL v3 conversions, HURD news, GNOME news, GCC news, and more..."

RMS: «Spending time to support a non-free system is not, in general, a virtue, and is not a particularly effective way to become a better
person.»

The newly formed Manchester Free software Group hosted Richard Stallman in Manchester or the first of May.
Talking on the subject of Free Software in ethics and practice", RMS drew a crowd of more than 300 people to the event, run in association with the BCS and IET.

Richard Stallman just switched to an OLPC XO, for the free bios, and at that same moment in time, Nicholas Negroponte made some odd statements about Windows and the OLPC.

"The new freedom movement , in software, knowledge, publishing and commerce, will change the way we think, do things and interact..."

"Yesterday, me and a couple of friends went to see a talk in Manchester by Richard Stallman (rms), the founder of the free software movement. I’m not sure quite how much the other two got from the experience, but I certainly found it very interesting - although I knew many of the things he said, it was the way he explained them, and it also provoked me to think about certain things..."

"...Richard also covered some of the important reasons why businesses, government and education establishments should use Free Software, preventing the support and development monopolies which are now becoming commonplace, along with the problem of proprietary vendors offering gratis or near-gratis copies of their software to schools in order to keep students reliant on their package and then carr

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"I have just returned from the BCS Manchester event on The Free Software Movement in Ethics and Practice presented by Richard Stallman, the founder and president of the Free Software Foundation. Richard, speaking for over 2 hours without notes or any visual aids, captivated the audience of over 250 with his passion about establishing a world in which user's freedom is respected..."