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
- Attacks on Techrights Are Only Making Techrights Bigger and Even More Popular
- A week ago they offered to settle with us
- EPO Staff Can Go Listen to Richard Stallman Next Week in Munich (Technical University of Munich, Rudolf-Diesel Hörsaal (MW2001) on Campus Garching at 18:00)
- "The talk is open to the public and attendance is free. Registration is not required."
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- Links 15/10/2025: Qantas Airways Loses Control of Sensitive Data and Software Patents Are Being Thrown Out
- Links for the day
- Vista 10 is 'Dead', Here's Why People Should Move to GNU/Linux (or the BSDs)
- Today we try to make an outline of reasons move away from Windows to GNU/Linux
- Our Sites Continue to Improve
- LLM slop has had no noticeable impact on us
- Gemini Links 15/10/2025: Neovim, Helix Compared and Gemlog.blue Now Closed
- Links for the day
- Links 15/10/2025: Mass Layoffs at Amazon, OneDrive Spyware Revved Up, More 'Gen Z Protests'
- Links for the day
- The EPO's Staff Engagement Survey 2025 is Already Tainted by Intimidation by EPO Management (Trying to Influence Outcomes by Scaring Genuine, Honest Critics)
- "[W]e have received reports that, following the previous survey, teams with negative responses were reproached or questioned about their answers..."
- The DDoS Attacks by Microsoft's Scam Altman and Other Slop Charlatans and Frauds is Hurting the FSF, Delinking It From Copyleft Projects
- This impacts a lot more than access to the licences
- Microsoft Scanning Faces in Photos People Upload to Microsoft (Even Unconsciously), Slashdot Turns Report About It Into "Microsoft Sez" (Says)
- Or "let's repeat the lies from a PR person/Microsoft's publicist"
- [Teaser] Angel Aledo Lopez the Manipulator (Nepotism, Poll Rigging, and Other EPO Corruption)
- We'll discuss this later today or tomorrow, based on internal EPO material
- Epic Metaphor for End of IBM: "The IBM Demolition is Down to the Last Shards!"
- Nothing lasts forever
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, October 14, 2025
- IRC logs for Tuesday, October 14, 2025
- Proprietary and DRM Prisons Spiralling Down the Sinkhole? Not Just Yet.
- Let's hope that more people will flee to GNU/Linux
- The European Patent Office (EPO), the Second-Largest Institution in Europe, is Cracking Down on Recreational Activities
- Without AMICALE activities, and as staff already says it's pressured to work more for less, how can the EPO recruit bright people?
- Transparency: FSFE financial reports exclude speaker fees and expenses
- Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
- Many Developers Have Many Political Views, They'll Never Agree on Everything
- It's an effort to divide and destroy, not build
- Gemini Links 14/10/2025: An Opportunity to Consider GNU/Linux and Another Simple IRC Client
- Links for the day
- Slopwatch: UbuntuPIT, LinuxSecurity, Google News, and the Serial Slopper Brian Fagioli
- Nothing of merit here, just more slop
- Links 14/10/2025: Lack of Trust in Slop and "Retirement Challenges"
- Links for the day
- Rhonda D'Vine, Gerfried Fuchs, Pronouns & Debian pregnancy cluster
- Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
- At IBM, Relocation Means Layoffs (Downsizing)
- Silent or 'invisible' layoffs?
- Central Staff Committee of the European Patent Office (EPO) Warns That EPO Management is Robbing or Manipulating Pension Funds Again
- Faking "growth" is just about as bad as forgery
- Probably a Lot Worse Than LLM Slop: GNOME Tying Itself to Divisive Politics, Even Where It's Clearly Not Relevant
- Something has gone terribly wrong in GNOME
- Links 14/10/2025: Microsoft OneDrive Scanning Faces in Photos (Without Asking First), "OpenAI Says It Will Move to Allow Smut"
- Links for the day
- They Generally Don't Like Scholars, as They're Less Compelled or Pressured to Repeat What Corporations and Oligarchs Say
- People who loathe scholars have an agenda in mind that, unlike that of reasonable people, revolves around controlling people
- Dystopian Trends in Technology Make Richard Stallman More Relevant Than Ever
- It's good to see him attracting vast audiences
- Belated New Article About Last Thursday's Lecture by Richard Stallman in Helsinki, Finland
- there are good reasons to pay with cash, not limited to privacy
- Attacking Richard Stallman Has Become 'Career Suicide'
- If you're going to viciously attack somebody, make sure your arguments are rock-solid
- Microsoft's Failing XBox Business Has Turned Games Into Funerals
- How does it feel to depend on Microsoft?
- Yesterday's "Distinguished Lecture" by Richard Stallman Possibly Attended by Close to 1,000 People
- The capacity of the place is about 900
- Slop Poisons Everything
- Imagine wanting to find what Torvalds has just said or what has just been released
- Taking Software Freedom 'Mainstream'
- interest in Software Freedom must have grown
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Monday, October 13, 2025
- IRC logs for Monday, October 13, 2025
- Gemini Links 14/10/2025: Ada Lovelace Day, Sony CLIE PEG-TG50 Review, Why to Avoid Network Solutions
- Links for the day
- Richard Stallman (RMS) Announced His Talk Less Than 24 Hours Before It Took Place and Still Filled Up the Auditorium at Sapienza Università di Roma
- Photos from yesterday evening [...] It looks like it was a very successful event
- The EPO's War on Techrights Was a Massive Mistake
- The EPO started the SLAPPs after we had published a few hundreds of articles; we've since then published close to 6,000 because the attacks on us emboldened insiders to help us
- General-Purpose Computers to Become Growing Area of Coverage
- Without them, we have little left for controlling our lives
- "They missed a great opportunity to shut up." -Jacques Chirac
- Brett Wilson LLP has been trying to cheat the legal system many times
- Harassment evidence: Switzerland, overcrowded fitness and yoga centers, incompetence and racism in accident response
- Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
- Vincent Danjean & Debian NXIVM collateral, blackmail risks
- Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
- In Sweden This Past Friday Richard Stallman Explained Why Copyleft is Important
- And he didn't have to 'bash' BSDs, either
- IBM Layoffs Due to a Lack of Money and Company Debt Rising by Almost 10 Billion Dollars in 6 Months
- IBM didn't buy Red Hat for any ideological reasons; it was a fast "cash grab" for revenue
- Forbes Already Stopped Being a News Sites. Now It's a Spam and Propaganda Platform for "Paying Partners" (Companies).
- news from Forbes became very scarce
- Is the Second-Largest Institution in Europe (EPO) Gradually Becoming More Like a Sweatshop?
- Underpaid, unqualified, inexperienced and incompatible people are already recruited to replace veteran examiners
- The Register MS Has No FOSS Coverage Anymore
- The Editor in Chief is like a Microsoft plant
- Links 13/10/2025: "Toasty Subwoofer" and WiFi Speakers "Are About To Go Dumb"
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 13/10/2025: iNaturalist and Tove Jansson’s Moominpappa at Sea
- Links for the day
- Microsoft Does Not Deny That Large Retailers Like Walmart, Costco and Target Are Giving Up on XBox (and Not Stocking It)
- No doubt XBox is in trouble and rumours suggest that more mass layoffs are imminent
- We'll Encourage Richard Stallman to Talk About Software Patents at the EPO Next Week When He Visits Munich (EPO Headquarters)
- Go listen to Richard Stahlmann
- Investigative Journalism Protects Society From Corruption, Crimes Against Women, Assaults on Civil Society
- "what is the point of men doing military practice to defend a system that is so rotten?"
- Swiss pimp usurping reputation of legendary Tissot boss Francois Thiébaud from France (BaselWorld, SWATCH Group SA)
- Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
- Paris 'Love Nest' & Debian Outreachy: from Lycée Lakanal to ENS Cachan, Cr@ns, nepotism
- Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
- Richard Stallman to Give Public Talk in 3 Hours, Then in the Technical University of Munich (Germany) Next Week
- Richard Stallman at TUM on 21.10.2025 18:00, MW2001
- Arnaud Parreaux lost case defending rogue employer
- Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
- Mathieu Elias Parreaux declared bankrupt in Switzerland
- Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
- Breakdown of the Rule of Law and Patent Law in the European Union (EU)
- The EPO cannot recruit suitably qualified patent examiners this way, let alone retain them
- Gemini Links 13/10/2025: Good Films, Wizard of Earthsea, Upgrading the Steam Controller's Stick
- Links for the day
- Leaks and Whistleblowers: Our Plan for Today
- Society simply cannot advance when too many people self-censor
- It's Not Justice When One Side Denies the Other Side the Ability to Even Speak
- At this stage, Brett Wilson LLP is in my humble opinion acting in contempt of the Court
- Links 13/10/2025: Australian Catholic University Uses Slop to Libel Students, Canada Threatens to Kill Beluga Whales
- Links for the day
- How Not to Silence Tux Machines (It'll Only Backfire, Badly)
- defending Microsoft while attacking this site
- Slopwatch: UbuntuPIT and Google News
- It seems abundantly clear that Google News and Google in general participates in the slop epidemic
- Vincent Danjean (not INTERPOL), Claire Bardel & Debian pregnancy cluster
- Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
- Christmas lynchings: Martin Krafft (madduck), Penny Leach (mjollnir) & Debian pregnancy cluster
- Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
- Gemini Links 13/10/2025: Birthdays and "Committee Unable to Contact Nobel Prize Winner"
- Links for the day
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Sunday, October 12, 2025
- IRC logs for Sunday, October 12, 2025
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?