Dave Cross encourages the dependence upon proprietary software by complaining that the Free Software Foundation’s recent 25th birthday video should have been distributed in non-free formats so people could see the video. A surface analysis would reveal that proprietors support … Continue reading
The GNU operating system is 25 years old this year! Stephen Fry has a celebratory video where he explains software freedom in a very non-technical and accessible way. The video is licensed to share and available in multiple free formats, … Continue reading
Got 20 minutes? Of course you do. Watch “The Story of Stuff” and learn about how we’re killing ourselves and each other with corporate power, government subservience to corporate power, unsustainable development, marketing, and the linchpin that keeps it all … Continue reading
Illuminata Analyst Gordon Haff is quoted as saying If people get the impression that even inadvertent license violations will get them involved with lawyers, you could well see some making the call that it’s safer to stay away from open … Continue reading
Today is Software Freedom Day, a day when we celebrate the freedom of free software for its own sake, relishing in the community we’ve built around sharing and treating each other as partners. Free software is software that respects the … Continue reading
Save some room for Apple, whose behavior would be as objectionable as Microsoft if Apple had the clout Microsoft does. Apple distributes proprietary software, thus denying its users software freedom. Apple’s proprietary word processor doesn’t support OpenDocument (ODF), a file … Continue reading
There’s a petition to tell the government to favor free software for all publicly-funded software projects and it’s hosted on petitions.pm.gov.uk. So here’s hoping that more UK citizens will sign it before 22 July and people with power will realize … Continue reading
Today the GNU General Public License version 3, the preeminent free software license, and the GNU LGPL were released today at noon Eastern Daylight Time. Read the press release about the announcement events or go directly to the Free Software … Continue reading
The Free Software Foundation has started a new campaign to convince people to support Ogg Vorbis with PlayOgg.org. Other formats (such as MP3, AAC, and many others) are patent-encumbered or only available with proprietary software. You shouldn’t have to lose … Continue reading
Two FSF sysadmins, Justin Baugh and Ward Vandewege, have written a straightforward list of points on “How hardware vendors can help the free software community” (text file, PDF, LaTeX). It’s short and very easy to read; each entry in the … Continue reading