No matter how glib and sarcastic the proprietor, proprietary software denies users the freedoms to inspect, share, and modify the program.
Users of Adobe’s proprietary Creative Suite software recently discovered that the programs communicate over the network with a machine apparently owned by Omniture, a company that tracks web usage. The Adobe software sends some [...]
Background
It’s needlessly hard to see a movie on the web because there are no widely-accepted standards for how movies should be encoded as data. Currently popular choices become unpopular later and none of them are well-documented (in a technical sense) or legally in the clear so that all browser programmers can implement them. [...]
More Microsoft advocates than I can link to (1, 2 are a couple) recently wrote non-critically about Microsoft’s recent announcement: Internet Explorer 8, the upcoming version of Microsoft’s proprietary web browser, will pass a standards-compliance test called “Acid2“. As this was covered widely in mainstream corporate press, this is not really news.
What’s news is [...]
The Samba team will soon get the fruits of the EU antitrust suit against Microsoft. Samba is software which allows an operating system to communicate with Microsoft Windows shared folders and printers over a network. The network protocols Microsoft uses are secret and had to be determined by Samba programmers by listening on the [...]
Sherry Wolf on why the Left can’t support Ron Paul is an engaging read, particularly advised for those who support Ron Paul’s policies. I think everyone who wants to run should be allowed to run, and I support Ron Paul’s attempt to overcome needlessly difficult ballot access requirements. But I’m not willing to [...]
Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert break union solidarity and return to their TV shows—that’s not the headline any of the pro-corporate news outlets puts on this story but they should. The Huffington Post’s comments summarize the reactions I’ve seen to this: apparently it’s okay to chastise late-night talk show host Carson Daly for having [...]
Jeff Cohen and Norman Solomon cover the worst of journalism this year in the sixteenth annual P.U.-litzer Prizes including Jeff Greenfield’s health care coverage post-SiCKO:
Reflecting what became mainstream media’s conventional wisdom in the wake of Michael Moore’s “SiCKO” documentary, CBS correspondent Greenfield explained that the U.S. lacks a universal healthcare system not because of the [...]
The Globe and Mail tells us:
Earlier today, Industry Canada, a ministry of the federal government, released a surprising study of peer-to-peer file-sharing on the music industry.
The study is called The Impact of Music Downloads and P2P File-Sharing on the Purchase of Music: A Study for Industry Canada, and was written by Birgitte Andersen and [...]
Hello Digital Citizen readers from the XO, an impressive new free software laptop for children all over the world.
I’ve recently received my XO, installed the battery, powered it up, and I’m on my way to doing all sorts of things with it. This machine comes with a free software operating system so it teaches [...]
Marco Tabini describes why he finds the GPL to be “morally repugnant” in the context of discussing the copyright infringement lawsuit facing Verizon right now. Verizon is accused of distributing the GNU General Public Licensed software “BusyBox” without distributing the complete corresponding source code as that license requires. Verizon is clearly in the [...]
GNU Software Freedom Law Center FSF blogs Electronic Frontier Foundation Nina Paley