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FSF taking the high road again: GNU Go on the Apple “App Store”

Apple is currently distributing an electronic version of the centuries-old board game “Go” called GNU Go. GNU Go’s copyright holder is the Free Software Foundation (FSF) and part of the GNU operating system. GNU Go is licensed to everyone under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL). Apple imposes numerous restrictions on program [...]

“Sintel” coming soon

The Blender Foundation, primary hackers of Blender, a free software non-linear video editor and 3D renderer, have been working on a new short movie called “Sintel”. You should get a free software web browser that can handle playing movies in free codecs. I suggest GNU Icecat or Firefox. Visit their blog for more details (including [...]

Patent Absurdity: A short movie on the problems of patents covering algorithms used in software

You should get a free software web browser that can handle playing movies in free codecs. I suggest GNU Icecat or Firefox. Patent Absurdity explores the case of software patents and the history of judicial activism that led to their rise, and the harm being done to software developers and the wider economy. The film [...]

Eben Moglen’s talk on Freedom in “The Cloud”

Prof. Eben Moglen, head of the Software Freedom Law Center, gives another must-not-miss talk on software freedom with hosted services (Google, Microsoft, Facebook, and other third-party services run on behalf of their users), colloquially known as “the cloud” (a purposefully vague reference to hosting services somewhere else, a virtual place that contains your data). What [...]

Sita Sings the Blues vs. Ink: How licensing treats us differently

“Sita Sings the Blues” is an independently produced movie that is widely legally copied on the Internet. Writer/director/producer Nina Paley released “Sita” under a license that allows sharing (and far more, actually, but the details of how much more are beside the point of this article). Sita is also for sale on her store and [...]

Apple DRM-free?

Cory Doctorow is an award-winning author of many books. He simultaneously distributes his work online at no charge and commercially through traditional book vendors. He also knows what DRM means for the reader/listener. Now he’s up for two Hugo awards, perhaps the most prestigious science fiction award. What does this have to do with Apple [...]

Critically important viewing: The World According to Monsanto

Marie-Monique Robin’s “The World According to Monsanto” is one of the most important recent documentaries because it exposes one of the most well-organized and dangerous corporations and because of Robin’s clearly conveyed research. This documentary aired in France on 11 March 2008 but I doubt it will show up in the US. Monsanto advertises widely [...]

Wall Street Journal on the value of ethical business

The Wall Street Journal conducted a test in which three groups of consumers were shown coffee and in a separate test they were shown t-shirts. In each test the group was told the products were “ethically produced”, a second group was told the products were made under unethical conditions, and a third group (the control [...]

Canada’s Next Great Prime Minister: Pam Hrick was robbed

The Canadian Broadcast Corporation recently released “Canada’s Next Great Prime Minister“, a competition show where five candidates competed to become the crowd favorite. The show is licensed to share. There’s been some buzz about it online (1, 2) and for good reason: their take on DRM is right-headed While plenty of TV networks have experimented [...]

Mainstream media favors price at expense of freedom, fairness

The New York Times’ review of Dell machines featuring the Ubuntu GNU/Linux distribution is a recent illustration of the problems one faces confusing price and freedom, then deciding that freedom (the more important of the two) isn’t worth talking about. But why would anyone want to use Linux, an open-source operating system, to run a [...]