New Video: How Free Software Can Save the World
- Dr. Roy Schestowitz
- 2009-07-30 11:51:21 UTC
- Modified: 2009-07-30 11:51:21 UTC
Recent Techrights' Posts
- Microsoft XBox is Dying as More Retailers Stop Stocking It and Massive Layoffs Planned Again
- Microsoft is circling down the drain
- Linux and the Freedom Paradox
- Linux is losing freedom if some external actors who only use Microsoft tools for development wrest control
- Watch the FSF Party Live (via Livestream)
- It's in WebM format, which is widely supported by now
- Advocacy of Software Freedom Changed, LUGs Became Less Relevant
- The way we see it, support groups like LUGs sort of outlived their usefulness when it became easier to install GNU/Linux
-
- Links 05/10/2025: Slow News Day and Wondering About the Canada Post Walkout
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 05/10/2025: Telnet Debugging and The Programmer’s Brain
- Links for the day
- More Than "Just a Rumour": XBox Seems to Have Just Died
- At this point, why would any studio out there target or partner with XBox?
- How to Tell Your Community, Project or Company is Being Infiltrated by Saboteurs
- How to identify nefarious social engineering
- The Fortieth Birthday of the FSF Made Us Extremely Happy
- It feels like the 'hacker community' is regrouping to discuss things and prepare for the next Big Challenge
- Chat Control 2 Them, Not 2 U
- Follow the advice of Dr. Patrick Breyer
- Mozilla: Throw Away Your "Old" PC and Enable "Digital Rights Management (DRM)"
- This is heading in a bad direction
- Controlling Our Computing for Another Forty Years
- 40 years of freedom
- Motivational Small Place to Run Large Sites
- We deem this scenery motivational and inspiring
- Techrights' Text Version (Daily Bulletin) Turns Five This Month
- our plain-text bulletins are turning 5 this month
- We'll Continue Covering the Moribund OSI and Other Dysfunctional if Not Hostile Institutions
- Stefano Maffulli's departure is due to his defection and due to him failing the mission in pursuit of money (his salary)
- Links 05/10/2025: Lufthansa Layoffs (4,000) and More Spotify Woes (Aside From Massive Debt)
- Links for the day
- The Free Software Foundation's Livestream Has Ended, Video/s Might be Online Next
- I've asked whether they'll upload video of some of the event; I still wait for an answer
- The Register MS Does Not Know the Difference Between Microsoft GitHub and GitLab
- At the time of writing (October 5) the article from "Thu 2 Oct 2025" remains uncorrected
- "Bullshit Generators" (What RMS Calls LLMs) and Fake Images Already Target the FSF
- Why does Google News promote fake articles about the FSF while omitting all the real ones?
- Software Patents as a Bubble
- Don't invest resources in hype; if you detect a bubble, run away from it
- Links 05/10/2025: Political Leftovers, Climate Change, and Security Incidents
- Links for the day
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Saturday, October 04, 2025
- IRC logs for Saturday, October 04, 2025
- For the Second Time in a Few Weeks Microsoft Lunduke Makes False Accusations Against Senior Red Hat Staff to Incite a Despicable 'Troll Army'
- Nothing that Microsoft Lunduke claims or says can be trusted
- When Microsoft "Integrates" Something With "AI" It Means It's Losing Money and Is Generally Hopeless
- how did Bing fare after 36 months of LLM slop being hyped up as "replacement" for search?
- Most Certificates Don't Improve Security, They Mostly Increase Downtime (for No Good Reason)
- The 'Gemini sites' (capsules) are a growing force
- The statCounter Site Has Data Integrity Problems
- Maybe we'll get back to statCounter when its data becomes more "stable" again
- 10 Ways to Combat Software Patents
- software patents are loathed also by proprietary software developers
- "Just a Little Bit of Meat..."
- Free software "absolutism" is not a radical stance, more so if the only "radical" belief the user possesses is that he or she must be in control of his or her software, and by extension his or her computer
- Compromised by NVIDIA Proprietary Library
- Meanwhile in Boston there are "[r]oundtable talk with FSF volunteers (both in-person and online)"
- Red Hat is Ignoring the Free Software Community, It's a "Fortune 1000" Vendor
- Red Hat's blog also participates a lot in promoting of Wall Street's latest pump-and-dump "AI" scheme
- Free Software Foundation Party Has Begun
- We shall be focusing a lot on software patents today
- Former Head of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Lina Khan Knows Whatever Microsoft Touches Will Die
- Just like Skype (as recently as months ago) [...] When Microsoft grabs things, or when it buys things, it almost never ends well
- Slopwatch: Fake Articles About LibreOffice in Austria and Wine 10.16
- very short
- Links 04/10/2025: "attempted Coup" Noted in Facebook, Russia Kills Journalists via Drones
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 04/10/2025: Anesthesia and Baudpunk
- Links for the day
- How Software Patents Were Viewed or Their General Status Changed Over Time
- A rough summary
- Links 04/10/2025: "Privacy Harm Is Harm", Criticism Outlawed in US
- Links for the day
- Garmin Uses Linux for Some of the Garmin Products, Now It's Sued by Strava Using Software Patents
- Software patents should never have been granted in the first place
- Richard Stallman Will Give a Talk in Sweden in 6 Days
- Dr. Stallman, despite his battle with cancer is still alive and mentally sharp
- FSF Turns 40
- We'll be focusing on patent-related topics this weekend
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Friday, October 03, 2025
- IRC logs for Friday, October 03, 2025
- Gemini Links 04/10/2025: Distro Hopping and "Part Time"
- Links for the day
- We Are Turning 19 in One Month, FSF Turns 40 in 3 Hours (CET)
- For our anniversary next month we still have no concrete plans
- Patent Docs (or PatentDocs) Learned the Wrong Lessons From the Death of TypePad
- Had they gone ahead with an SSG, they'd become a lot more future-proof
- USPTO Patent Bubble Already Imploding, After Decades of Artificial Inflation, Entire Offices Close for Good
- we can deduce that financial pressures (lack of "demand" for monopolies) play a role
- TikTok is Not Harmless (Being CheeTok in the US Will Advance Orange Agenda)
- Social control media isn't "fun and games"; it's a digital weapon that lets hostile groups or nations infiltrate others, then turn them against themselves
- Andy Farnell and Helen Plews Explain What "Modern" Tech Does to Old People
- Imposing terrible tech "religion" on people is not helping them
- Tomorrow the Free Software Foundation (FSF) Turns 40 and Its Web Site is Still Slow Due to DDoS by LLM Slop Bots
- For an advocacy group, uptime is important (for its message to remain accessible)
- Slopwatch: Google News as a Firehose of LLM Slop About "Linux"
- Google News is really bad
- Datamation, Where I Used to Publish Articles, Appears to Have Been Sold to TechnologyAdvice Only to Become a Slopfarm
- I'd prefer to not associate with that site anymore
- Links 03/10/2025: "NPR’s Economics Lessons Come With Neoliberal Spin" and Canada Post at Risk
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 03/10/2025: Panic Attacks and Food Adulteration
- Links for the day
- Links 03/10/2025: Lawyers Caught Using LLM Slop Explain Why They Did It, LibreSSL 4.1.1 and 4.0.1 Released
- Links for the day
- FSF Board Grew 50% Since Last Year, Has New President, Turns 40 in Two Days
- It's a good move for the FSF and - by extension - for software freedom
- Links 03/10/2025: Conflicts, Death of TypePad, and TikTok/CheeTok Gives a Boost to Far Right Groups in Europe
- Links for the day
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Thursday, October 02, 2025
- IRC logs for Thursday, October 02, 2025
- Slopwatch: Linux Journal, Google News, and LinuxSecurity
- They carry on polluting the Web with fake articles
- Gemini Links 02/10/2025: Kubernetes With FreeBSD and robots.txt
- Links for the day
Comments
satipera
2009-07-30 13:08:27
Dario
2009-08-01 07:05:15
http://www.geeksoc.org/gcds/Keynote:%20Glyn%20Moody,%20Why%20Hackers%20Will%20Save%20the%20World.ogv#/Keynote_Glyn_Moody_Why_Hackers_Will_Save_the_World_ogv_Keynote_20Glyn_20Moody_20Why_20Hackers_20Will_20Save_20the_20World.ogv
zatoichi
2009-08-01 14:29:18
bambambox
2009-08-01 14:45:37
http://boycottnovell.com/2009/08/01/hackweek-and-suse-studio/
Granted, there is no fanfare, but the news has been reported.
zatoichi
2009-08-01 15:56:12
Maybe he likes complaining about things better than getting what he wants.
Say, speaking of "complaining about things", here is a video in which Mr. Stallman makes the claim that the ability of the Linux kernel to dynamically load drivers violates the terms of the GPL—evidently he's saying that, since the kernel can't fulfill the terms of the license, it can't be legitimately said to be released under that license.
Given that, why hasn't the FSF stopped using the non-free "GNU/Linux" system and moved over to the completely free "GNU/HURD" system? Why hasn't it recommended that others do so as well?
bambambox
2009-08-01 17:31:15
Any how, over on the Mono Nono site there is talk of making a proper distribution out of it, by including alternative applications like Gnote and such. Might be something, might be nothing. We'll just have to wait and see.
zatoichi
2009-08-01 17:51:26
I can't account for the trouble you're having, since I pretty much stated what I see as Roy's motivation to bury this flat-out.
Roy would rather complain about "Mono in the default Ubuntu install" than actually do anything about it, or acknowledge anyone else's having done something about it. Jo's "Chicken Little Remix" removes a front in the "war" Roy imagines he's waging, and that's not helpful to him. Roy is not about getting results, he's about getting attention. If he admits that he "won" here, then he can't complain about how Canonical and Ubuntu are "oppressing" the "community" by including Mono-related stuff any more. So he buries the story.
Is that clear enough? For all the complaining Roy's done about Mono being in Ubuntu, he's never taken a single practical step to actually doing anything about it. He's posted a lot of questionable articles about it, run down a lot of people associated with Ubuntu and Canonical about it, but he didn't submit his name for an open seat on the Ubuntu Technical Board, and he didn't do a simple remix, like Jo thoughtfully did.
I'll be very interested to see whether the folks who want Mono out of Ubuntu so badly are willing and able to do the heavy lifting, now that Jo has shown them how. So far, Dan Serban seems to be airing his sense of entitlement to Jo's time in unilaterally signing Jo up to do twice-yearly releases for him. Jo reports no more than a handful (around ten, last herd from) of downloads, but since Roy's burying the story...
saulgoode
2009-08-01 19:19:52
Richard Stallman stated, "He [Linus Torvalds] implemented a feature in Linux, the kernel, for the dynamic loading of device drivers.
Now the effect of this was that GNU/Linux could use a device with a proprietary device by dynamically loading it. Now I think that this violates the GNU GPL just as much as statically linking the same driver would violate the GNU GPL."
Contrasting Mr Stallman's actual words with your paraphrasis, Mr Stallman was NOT claiming that the ability to dynamically link proprietary drivers which violated the GPL -- it was that the dynamically linking itself did so.
Now I don't think Mr Stallman's statement is entirely accurate in that it is an oversimplification and overlooks that there are some situations where dynamically linking a proprietary driver can be legal -- but nonetheless he did not actually claim that the ability to dynamically load proprietary drivers violated the GPL.
Nor is Mr Stallman's interpretation of the derived works aspect of copyright law unique to him, or the Free Software Foundation, or the Software Freedom Law Center. It is an opinion that has been expressed by Linus Torvalds and Greg Kroah-Hartman.
bambambox
2009-08-01 19:33:03
Yes, sure. You don't like Roy very much, I notice. I'm not getting into that argument, thanks.
My guess is that one of the reasons the downloads are so few because those opposed to Mono will have already nuked it from their desktops long ago. The remix is useless to these people, and who else will such a distribution appeal to? Personally, I can't see the logic in installing an entire distro just to have a few different default packages, but there it is.
zatoichi
2009-08-01 19:49:07
It's equally unclear to me why Roy (or anyone) should feel that right approach is that the Ubuntu Technical Board should abandon its normal process and just "listen to (e.g.) Roy" rather than "(e.g.) Roy should remove whatever he doesn't want from his own desktop and get on with life".
But there it is; what's one to do?