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Happy 25th Birthday Gnu!
The GNU Software Project to provide a wholly free operating system turns 25 today! Check out this great video showing British superstar Stephen Fry . Thanks to rms, Linus Torvalds, Aaron Siego, Miguel de Icaza and others who have worked hard to give us a free operating system that we can tweak and that no…
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gNewSense 2.0 (deltah) Review
So gNewSense 2.0 came out a few days ago as the gNewSense crew is tracking Ubuntu LTS releases. Of course, the bad part is that there is no upgrade path from gNewSense 1.0 to 2.0. Ubuntu recommends upgrading by going from release to release so upgrading is not feasible (or is too hard for the…
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Finally…evaluating the purpose of both Gobuntu and gNewSense
I’ve always been the first to jump to the defenses of people who love creating more distros and programs. After all, if everyone just stuck to the established distros we would never have had Ubuntu and perhaps Linux would still be just a curiousity to most. However, I just didn’t see the purpose in both…
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GPL shows benefits in unexpected places!
When most people think of the GPL, if they think of it at all, they tend to think of Linux and perhaps other operating systems. However, there are many benefits to using the GPL for programs on a smaller level. For example there is a Go Application in Facebook. This programmer could have gone…
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Charitable Donations for 2008
This year I decided to mainly support technological causes. I donated to the Free Software Foundation and the Electronic Frontier Foundation. I think that rms and the rest over at the FSF are really doing a lot of great work to preserve our freedoms. I especially like the Defective by Design campaign they’ve been running. …
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Is it really stealing?
Publishers often refer to prohibited copying as “piracy.” In this way, they imply that illegal copying is ethically equivalent to attacking ships on the high seas, kidnapping and murdering the people on them. If you don’t believe that illegal copying is just like kidnapping and murder, you might prefer not to use the word “piracy”…
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Riddle me This; Riddle me That
Next time you find yourself wondering why people like me (or rms) make such a big deal about having the source code to software (especially when it comes to voting machines), ask yourself why we make scientists show us all of their research instead of taking their word for it. Think about why it’s important…
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Video blog post: Libre Software
An introduction to Libre Software and why you should consider using it. Libre Software Part 1 (An Introduction) on Vimeo
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GPL wins Legal Battle Again!
The same dork who, last December, was trying to claim that the GPL ruined his ability to program because the software was available for free, appealed last December’s decision. Well, on 9 November, he was handed another blow from the US Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. The Judge was a pretty smart guy…
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gNewSense Review
I have to say that the first thing I noticed when I booted into gNewSense is that they have chosen a supremely ugly theme for their icons. I felt like plucking my eyes out rather than continue with this distro. I don’t know why I had such a against it. As you can see in…
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More Updates on the Novell and Microsoft Deal
Eben Moglen, a lawyer for the Free Software Foundation, remarks that the new deal may violate Section 7 of the GPL! So now you see that the stakes in the GPLv3 talks are very high! The GPLv2 may indeed be our saviour against Microsoft’s tyranies, but more on that momentarily! Mr. Moglen specifically comments: “If…
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gNewSense, a TRUE GNU/Linux System
So you thought Debian was pretty anal about free software did you? Well you ain’t seen nothin’ yet! Love ’em or hate ’em, but the Free Software Foundation is very serious (and extreme) in their position of what constitutes free software. Although this has alienated some, I think that a certain amount of what they…
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Shuttleworth Weighs in in IceWeasel
As you may have heard recently, Debian has a problem with Firefox due to the fact that the artwork is not released under a free license. This is an extension of problems they’ve had with GNU’s documentation and the clause that allows some parts to remain uneditable. So Debian has forked Firefox into IceWeasel. The…
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GNU GPL V3 Draft is out!
What kind of Linux-focused blog would this be if I didn’t mention that version 3 of the GPL was out! You can read it here!