As the New York Times recently reported, Brazil is asking for free software. What’s not clear is that Brazil, like Peru, is not asking for open source. The headline and the quote inside the NYT article get it right. Seeing “open source” language is an attempt to horn in on the popularity of software freedom [...]
Kevin Zeese offers a must-read (Counterpunch mirror) for any self-respecting progressive who is not just a Democratic Party hack pretending to be anti-war. Here’s a sample: “Hopefully the peace movement also learned a lesson: Democrats need to be opposed for engaging in war just as pro-war Republicans need to be opposed. The anti-Vietnam War movement [...]
Election 2004: The Nation joins the Democratic Party sycophants and tells people to shun Nader’s campaign. Everyone knew his campaign wouldn’t get the votes he got in 2000 and would likely be a non-entity insofar as being an effective so-called “spoiler” (even without getting into the prejudice of the term “spoiler”). But many billable hours [...]
You can still catch reruns of the recent teach-in on C-SPAN. The teach-in was organized by some of the self-described anti-war groups. The teach-in dates back to the Vietnam war. There, the anti-war movement taught anyone who wanted to come in and learn effective strategies for opposing the Vietnam war. You’d find stimulating discussion which [...]
Lance Selfa of the Socialist Worker writes another insightful piece on how “grassroots” organizations that support Democrats end up having their agenda handed to them by the Democratic Party. There are two places to get the article. “United Auto Workers (UAW) President Walter Reuther, who once confessed that the UAW could have taken over the [...]
Some commercially distributed films are preserved. Studios that see no potential for profit in doing this work will (and have) let films disappear, rot never to be seen again. Copyright law protects their efforts—as long as the movie is under copyright, nobody may duplicate the movie without the permission of the copyright holder. Interest in [...]
Gervase Markham asks “wouldn’t that be a great slogan for Firefox? “Firefox. Socially responsible browsing.” and Josh Aas, a Camino developer, responds that introducing some Free Software talk is something they “need to do a better job of”. It would be a nice slogan for Firefox. But if the Mozilla Foundation has something to say [...]
This past weekend, the second anniversary of the British and American invasion and occupation of Iraq, anti-war protests around the world went well. There was lots of participation and much discussion about the war but not in the corporate media which is hardly surprising (this lack of coverage being another instance of an unbroken line [...]
More recommended reading from Counterpunch: Alexander Cockburn’s article on how the Democrats and Republicans work together to further disenfranchise the entire country. Illinois residents and Democratic party supporters will want to take note of another vote Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) made: “Near the end of February many Democrats in the House okayed a Republican bill [...]
John Walsh on the “progressives” backing Democrats hits many issues the Left needs to discuss (but won’t). To this, I’d only add that the “anti-war” movement has a lot to answer for: No justification of voting pro-war (particularly for the majority who didn’t need to—I’ve expounded on this many times before), no marches of any [...]
GNU Software Freedom Law Center FSF blogs Electronic Frontier Foundation Nina Paley