category archive: free software

No? How about if we move the decimal point over a couple of places? Do you have $20.00?

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Consider Benjamin Mako Hill’s appeal, “Technological power should be held by all users of a technology,” which reads in part:

The Free Software Foundation continues to play a central and critical role in this struggle. Support of the FSF is an important way that you can take action today. More than any other organization, the FSF creates, supports, and protects the licenses, laws, communities, and software that is necessary to ensure the existence of technology under its users’ control. The FSF is nearly alone in its direct outreach to to raise awareness of DRM, software patents, and issues of software freedom and technology control. It has a strong record as a steward of software freedom and an advocate for the ideals of technological control by users.

I just finished reading Masters of Doom by David Kushner, a book about John Carmack and John Romero. When the story is well told, I love books like this about people who have done great things.

I don’t play games much these days, but I loved Doom and Quake, and have admired Carmack in particular for his apparent programming virtuosity, his views on patents, and his support of free software. (I also thought Romero was pretty cool, and gained a greater appreciation for his work from reading the book.)

On patents, there was this from his days at Softdisk:

Al had never seen a side scrolling like this for the PC. “Wow,” he told Carmack, “you should patent this technology.”

Carmack turned red. “If you ever ask me to patent anything,” he snapped, “I’ll quit.” Al assumed Carmack was trying to protect …

A few years ago, I wrote a silly article for Free Software Magazine titled, “5 Ways to Save on Your Monthly Software Rental Bill in the Year 2056.” I imagined WinZip as one example of proprietary software still rolling along 50 years in the future, still charging its users over and over for the same thing.

At home I have no need for WinZip, since I run a free operating system and there are plenty of free tools for such a basic task as file compression. But at work, where I’m not free, and the powers-that-be are quite rigid about software choice, I still use it. (And it’s not bad software, mind you. It just seems silly to pay for it, given the free alternatives.)

Last month I had WinZip 14 installed on a new laptop, and as part of …

I’m learning the joys of typography. Up until now I haven’t really specified fonts on this web site. I’ve just let the browser and system defaults run the show. For me, using Ubuntu and Firefox, that meant I was seeing my site and many other web pages with DejaVu Serif. That isn’t a bad looking font, but I’ve been experimenting and prefer the look of sans serif. Especially: DejaVu Sans.

So I’m specifying more font families in my style sheets now, hoping to influence how you see this place. If you’re using GNU/Linux or another Unix operating system, you might be seeing the words in the preferred font. Otherwise you’re probably getting Verdana or Helvetica. Since I don’t have Windows readily available for testing, and no Mac access at all, it’s …

Just so, 126 years later:

U.S. Supreme Court

Atlantic Works v. Brady, 107 U.S. 192 (1883)

Decided March 5, 1883

MR. JUSTICE BRADLEY delivered the opinion of the Court.

It was never the object of those laws to grant a monopoly for every trifling device, every shadow of a shade of an idea, which would naturally and spontaneously occur to any skilled mechanic or operator in the ordinary progress of manufactures.

Such an indiscriminate creation of exclusive privileges tends rather to obstruct than to stimulate invention. It creates a class of speculative schemers who make it their business to watch the advancing wave of improvement and gather its foam in the form of patented monopolies which enable them to lay a heavy tax upon the …

FreeMind is a great free software program. It is identified as “mind mapping” software, for brainstorming or whatnot, but is also a general productivity/organizational tool. It’s early days for me, but I think it may help me organize my notes and projects more effectively. It’s basically just arranging things in a tree structure, but the visual/spatial layout seems to help me.

I tried it out a couple of years ago, but didn’t really give it a chance. Now with version 0.8.1, it seems very polished. It’s a Java program, which may suggest sluggishness to some people, but it’s very snappy and responsive for the maps I’ve created. It’s very easy to use: easy to add nodes and move things around and format them. After …

I saw an item pop up in my feed reader from the Freedom Now blog. It took me a moment to remember that this is Eben Moglen’s blog. I added it a while back but he hasn’t posted since April 2007, so the title looked unfamiliar in my reader’s “A” list.

I’m happy to see that he intends to start posting again. Eben is right there with Richard Stallman in providing inspiration for a free society, where all knowledge and information is freely available to everyone. There in his post are the kind of bold and sweeping claims I enjoy finding in his writing and speeches:

The movement I now realize it’s clear I’m giving my life to is on the verge of irreversibly changing humanity. I may yet live to see the world I have been dreaming …

Great post today from Benjamin Mako Hill about free software advocacy and principles. It’s not very long so you should just go read the whole thing for yourself, but here are a couple of choice parts:

One reason I tend to stay away from “open source” claims in my own advocacy is that I’m worried by the way that these arguments rely on a set of often dubious empirical claims of superiority. Free software, on the other hand, can be seen as statement of principles. Regardless of whether we say “free software” or “open source,” I’ve found that a focus on principled statements is both more robust against counter-arguments and does a better job of describing the motivations of most contributors.

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Humans are driven to imagine worlds that they would want to live in. For a growing group of …

Free Software is software that you are free to share with your family, friends, and neighbors.

Isn’t that a nice thing? It doesn’t cost anything to make copies of digital information, and we have these wonderful machines and a worldwide network that are perfect for copying and sharing. Why not use these tools to freely share our accumulated knowledge? You may also modify the software, if you are so inclined, and are free to distribute your modified version. You don’t have to ask for permission for any of this, either.

That puts things rather simply, and leaves out some fine print, but this is essentially how it works. And it does work. We’re in the midst of a free software revolution! Although like all revolutions, there are counterforces at work.

For a good introduction to what free …

Happened to run across this last night:

mndaily.com: Comp. sci. activist to talk computing freedom at U

Which led me to dig up this press release with details. Willey Hall on the West Bank of the University of Minnesota at 6:30pm.

I’m not sure if I’ll make it. I’d love to hear Richard speak in person, even if it’s “just” his standard speech. It’s a lot more convenient for me to drive down to the U than fly to Boston.

I never got around to writing more about my trip to the FSF Associate Members meeting earlier in the year. Speaking of seeing the Great Man in person, the member meeting started with no RMS in sight. He wasn’t scheduled to appear until a panel later in the day, but I expected to see him …