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It's nothing whatsoever like that.

How is it nothing like that? I'll give you a clearer quote from RMS:

RMS: Proprietary software is unethical, because it denies the user the basic freedom to control her own computer and to cooperate. It may also be of low quality or insecure, but that's a secondary issue. I will reject it even if it is the best quality in the world, simply because I value my freedom too much to give it up for that.

And this:

He asked questions such as, how do game developers, like himself, make a living without making proprietary software? Stallman replied with a stock statement that such a job is unethical and that he should do something else, and further elaborated that there are lots of jobs writing custom software for clients, and that those clients, if they're not stupid, will demand the source code.

I don't know if I can get it through your thick skull, but RMS says and has been saying for decades that making proprietary software makes you a bad person and the ethical thing to do is to quit your job if you can't do it in an "ethical" = "free software" way.

Didn't anyone ever tell you that argument by analogy is a logical fallacy when the analogy is false?

Didn't anybody tell you that falsely appealing to a fallacy is a fallacy?

[...]He's been almost explicit about the immorality of licenses he disagrees with, such as the BSD license[...]

That's most likely a lie. Please tell us where he says something like that.

Meanwhile here's what I found of him saying about the BSD license:

FB: Wasn't that BSD license free enough?

RMS: This license does qualify as free software, but I think it is not as good as some free software licenses because it doesn't protect the freedom of all users. It allows middlemen to make the software proprietary, which means they distribute the software to others but without the freedom.

From: http://linuxdevcenter.com/pub/a/linux/2004/12/22/rms_interview.html?page=2

Having worked with Linux/Unix in C/C++ the joy is knowing that the API is *stable*; malloc() hasn't changed in what, 30+ years??

Except that it did (there's more to API than just function names and types - semantics is important as well).

What's really unfortunate is that he's one of the very few language maintainers out there that isn't of the mentality "Rah rah! My language/tool/design-philosophy/whatever is the solution to all your problems and will take over the world tomorrow."

Care to actually provide the names of those other language maintainers, with appropriate citations, that make such claims?

Very well. They don't out and out say that exact phrase but I'm sick of languages being marketed to me like an automobile. Here are a few after a bit of Googling. I don't really have time to dig more up:

Larry Wall of Perl: "Perl is designed to give you several ways to do anything, so consider picking the most readable one. " - From the Perl Man Pages

Yukihiro Matsumoto of Ruby: "Why should you switch to Ruby? If you are happy with Perl or Python, you don't have to. But if you do feel there must be a better language, Ruby may be your language of choice." and then "I believe people want to express themselves when they program. They don't want to fight with the language. Programming languages must feel natural to programmers." From an interview. It's hard not to roll my eyes when I hear about the latest flavor of the month. Ruby's marketed as 'the most natural.'

From Sun's about Java page they claim, "Write powerful and efficient applications for mobile phones, remote processors, low-cost consumer products, and practically any other device with a digital heartbeat." As one of their reasons developers choose Java.

I'm surprised you aren't sick of languages being marketed to you as silver bullets that can solve all your problems. That's really all I see these days. No more are people considering a multitude of languages to be a toolbox you use to solve all kinds of problems but instead you see languages like Java being marketed for inappropriate things. It's like the inventor of C#, Anders Hejlsberg said, "The dream is to have a single programming model." I just don't believe that's a realistic dream.

If I were in their shoes, I would explicitly say what the language is but also explicitly say what it is not. As someone who's tried to do video analysis in Java, I've been down the "should not" path and wasted my time.

An additional feature of squid, If you can find some way of getting unrestricted local network access, Squid also has a peering system so you and your classmates could share cache pools. It does appears that you can limit it to only respond if the resource is in the cache. (never_direct) http://www.linuxdevcenter.com/pub/a/linux/2001/09/17/squidpeering.html

The technique was created by Daniel J. Bernstein and Eric Schenk in September 1996. The first implementation for SunOS was released by Jeff Weisberg a month later, and Eric Schenk released his Linux implementation in February 1997 (the current implementation uses e.g. net.ipv4.tcp_syncookies).

From an old 2001 syn cookies vulnerability report:

syncookies can be disabled on a running system by executing the command:

echo 0 > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/tcp_syncookies

(To the editors: Mind adding the above line to the summary? Thanks!)

Patch your systems. NOW! (note that this makes them vulnerable to syn flood attacks, but at least those won't leave your system unusable until reboot!)

The MS Office system includes components not to be found in OpenOffice.org. Outlook is simply the most visible example.

I know. Yet still some organisations seem to think they can get on quite allright without those components. cf. Ernie Ball, Bristol City Council and Munich Council.

I accept that these cases are the exception, not the rule. But the OP's question was "what's in it for me?". My answer is "One or two things, but probably not if you've already gone out and bought Office" and that is what it remains.

From this interview with RMS http://www.linuxdevcenter.com/pub/a/linux/2004/12/22/rms_interview.html?page=2

RMS: This is what ensures that the users have the four freedoms. The BSD licenses do not ensure this, and thus not all users have these freedoms.

The BSD licenses (there were more than one of them) do not give more freedom. What they offer, to those who can take advantage of it, is power: power to deny others' freedom. That is not a good thing.

Linus's comments about morality being equated to legality are because some people are claiming that the only acceptable moral choice is to adopt GPLv3. Linus rejects this and so do I.

His comments on hypocrisy are about people who claim Linus should not be free to choose to continue using GPLv2. But this is nothing new.

Advocates of the GPL argue that it maximizes freedom by constraining the abilities of software developers to do "bad" things with the code. If a software developer can't do something like change the code without distributing the changes, that's less freedom for the developer, but more freedom for the USERS (some of whom may be developers who want to develop in turn).

Advocates of the BSD claim that it is more free, full stop. Users can do anything, including adding one new secret feature and selling the binary.

But some advocates of the GPL are so sure of their position, they think the GPL is the only acceptable license. And now, I guess they think GPLv3 is the only acceptable license.

About a half dozen years ago, Tim O'Reilly commented that the bedrock freedom upon which the other freedoms build (he called it "Freedom Zero") is the freedom of a software developer to choose which license to use to distribute the software. Richard Stallman bitterly rejected this idea! He characterized it as "Power Play Zero", as in, if the developer chooses the "wrong" license it is imposing power upon the poor helpless users of the software.

Freedom Zero: http://oreillynet.com/pub/wlg/526

Power Play Zero: http://www.linuxdevcenter.com/pub/a/linux/2001/08/ 15/free_software.html

I find it ironic that Richard Stallman, after ranting about the evils of power (imposing things on users by force), has pushed for a license that imposes all sorts of requirements in the name of freedom. "Tivoization"? I don't have a problem with that, and I think it's overreach for a license to try to stamp that out. What's next? "Googleization", where the software runs as a service, and the poor users never get to look at the software? Maybe GPLv4 will try to stamp out "Googleization".

P.S. I wonder if Richard Stallman can own a microwave oven? He has sworn to do his utmost to never use software unless it is free software. Well, microwave ovens have some sort of microcontroller that has some sort of software, and it's closed source proprietary. You never get the source ever. Does RMS lie awake at night worrying about how to solve this problem?

You may think I'm trolling with this comment, but I'm not. Read his comments on the evils of firmware in things like network interface card drivers. It's okay to have a NIC with a ROM, as long as the driver is free software; but a new version of the card that downloads firmware at boot time would be immoral, because the users can't get the source code for the downloadable firmware. I don't get it.

We owe RMS a huge debt for starting the whole free software ball rolling. GPL was awesome and GCC was essential. But it seems to me that RMS is now worried to extremes, and I'm not with him on the new stuff.

"it is unstructured choice that makes it difficult for consumers"

I'll agree with that. Now tell me where the structure is in choosing a distro for Linux.

MS offers choices in their new Vista, and the 5 or so versions that they offer is an almost unbearable choice for consumers. ('Ohhh, do I really need feature X? What if I choose not to get it, and need it later?') At least they have a chart that shows you the features and what you'll be missing if you buy the cheap ones.

Linux offers dozens of distros and I've never yet seen a chart that shows the pros and cons of each one, or even the biggest 5. For instance, check this page. http://www.linuxdevcenter.com/pub/a/linux/2005/10/ 27/what-is-a-linux-distribution.html It says 'Choosing a Linux Distribution' and lists the major ones. Does it tell you what they do? No, it tells you how they were born. WTF good is that?? It does recommend Debian for servers, and Ubuntu for newcomers. But it doesn't say the features at all.

So it's unstructured choice. You could spend months on the net researching distros before you actually found the one that suited you. With the Windows Vista chart, it would take an hour, tops.

BTW, that link was the first result from Googling 'linux distro chart' and none of the other results even seem relevant.

I think this is the seamless solution that will allow people to migrate to linux in baby steps.

While I cannot comment on Kino, Cinelerra has a "community version" which is an unofficial fork(?) of the project. This version is generally recommended over the official release because it is easier to build and contains bugfixes that the original may not have incorporated yet. The projects goal is to provide more timely bugfixes/patches to the original Cinelerra as developed by Heroine (which only releases updates every several months). More information can be found here.

For those unfamiliar with the history of Cinelerra, the developer(s) are anonymous so as not to jeopardize their current employment status; apparently the author(s) believe there might be a conflict of interest with regard to their day job(s). Regardless, Cinelerra is an excellent product though it is probably overkill for most home users. The learning curve is relatively steep as well. There is a slightly dated (circa 2003) yet interesting article which has an interview with "Jack Crossfire" (pseudonym for the developer(s)) that covers some of the directions the software is taking which can be found here.

I meant transparent for users, not the destination servers.

An example of instructions to set up squid in this way can be found here

Except for potential error messages to users (such as a cache access denied message) this kind of proxying is transparent to the user.

SAIX does this as well, but the only errors ever seen is a few "Gateway timeout" messages.

I'll wait till this thing is thoroughly 'hacked'......and someone take what may be decent hardware (just guessing here), and makes it useful with non MS and non-RIAA backed 'prisonware'......once opensource works on this, it may be worth getting.

Sony are control freaks. They are not going to let you do homebrew games on the PS3. Their systems are ALWAYS locked down tight. If you want to see the kind of "Linux" you'll get on the PS3, look no further than the "Linux" they offered on the PS2. It will be just as worthless.

-Eric

Linus Torvalds, the creator of the Linux kernel, has been quite clear on his position of ABI stability on the Linux Kernel Mailing List: "It's not going to happen. I am _totally_ uninterested in a stable ABI for kernel modules, and in fact I'm actively against even _trying_. I want people to be very much aware of the fact that kernel internals do change, and that this will continue." He continues, "I occasionally get a few complaints from vendors over my non-interest in even _trying_ to help binary modules. Tough. It's a two-way street: if you don't help me, I don't help you. Binary-only modules do not help Linux, quite the reverse. As such, we should have no incentives to help make them any more common than they already are."

There is some guy who's name escapes me (and who is also I believe famous in geek circles) that said that if you take away features from a protocol, you'll increase innovation.

Could be Richard Stalllman

Freedom, Innovation, and Convenience: The RMS Interview

Nonfree software is controlled by its developer. The developers often implement malicious features--for example, to spy on the user or to restrict the user. Sometimes they keep the malicious features secret. But they also figure that people will be so desperate for the software that they will accept it even with malicious features. Users can't remove the malicious features, because they don't have the source code.

This cannot happen with free software, because free software is controlled by the users. If ever a free program had a malicious feature, any programmer could remove the malicious feature and release a modified version--and all users would choose that version, including nonprogrammers. You won't have to make this change yourself, because someone else will have done the job for you before you get it.

Some people will likely say "But you have to spend so much time tweaking Linux to get it the way you want!" To that I respond that I don't even have the option of tweaking Mac OS X to work the way I want. /blockquote.

Atari VCS: Atari, Spectravideo, and Perphial Visions Inc. all tried to create a keyboard for it. Only the Spectravideo keyboard made it to market. Only the Spectravision keyboard made it to market. It flopped.

Intellivision: Mattel promised from day 1 that the Intellivision would be able to be turned into a full computer by adding a special keyboard component. Unfortunately, the component proved too expensive to manufacture. When Mattel was finally forced to release the product due to an FTC fine, nearly every unit was returned as broken or defective. Mattel then shifted gears in a hurry and released the Entertainment Computer System, a quick hack produced by a secret project that was intended to get Mattel out of hot water. Predictably, it flopped in the market.

Odyssey 2: Magnavox actually integrated a keyboard into this console, but gave no thought to an OS, tape drive, or printer. There was a BASIC kit released for the European version, but otherwise this console's potential as a computer was sadly underutilized.

Coleco Adam: Coleco had the bright idea of creating a computer that could play Colecovision games. Consumers couldn't decide whether or not it was a game machine or a serious "home computer" system. Combined with its odd design (the power was routed through the printer) it flopped in the market.

Atari 5200: This actually WAS a computer packed into a game system case. Unsurprisingly, no peripheral components were produced to prevent competition with the Atari 400/800 systems.

Atari 7800: Again, a keyboard component was created, but never marketed. With Nintendo deciding NOT to ship the Famicom Floppy Disk Drive in America, Atari may have finally realized that trying to make a game console into a computer wasn't such a good idea.

PlayStation 2: Sony tries to make the PlayStation into a generic computer with a keyboard/mouse attachment, a harddrive, and a copy of Linux. Sony kills the product citing poor sales.

PlayStation 3: Sony tries to differentiate their console by claiming that "it's a computer". Welcome to the 1980s.

http://www.linuxdevcenter.com/pub/a/linux/2004/03/ 25/ps2_linux.html

"These are Vector Unit demos, written to run solely on Vector Unit 1, with 16K data memory and 16K instruction memory. In the past couple of years Sony has run a demo contest with some nice equipment prizes. Make sure you don't miss Mike Day's "Universe," the 2003 winning entry in the U.S. professional competition.

Coding doesn't have to be this low level. If you would rather, see an OpenGL-clone project called ps2gl in /usr/doc/ps2gl-0.2.2. The web site has updates."

So you can access the vector units (emotion engine), and you can use OpenGL on the unit, but you think you can't make a full 3D game on it? I can't say as I how I agree. As to whether you can make a decent game on it, that's a matter of gameplay and taste. No API can restrict gameplay or taste, so I would assert it is theoretically possible to make a decent game on there too. So I would assert you can make a decent 3D game.

It seems that no one has, which bolsters your argument though.

I've used PS2 Linux, and it's very rudimentary. I won't argue with that.

We'll see about Wii. I like N, so I do have some hope they might allow development. But really it comes down to whether it will add value to the platform. At this time, I don't see how it will. As you say, time will tell.

There aren't many in the wild but they definitely exist and they all perform some function you wouldn't want them to perform on your computer.

They're not being lazy, Linus himself has made it clear that he doesn't want to do a stable ABI for kernel modules. No doubt it could be done, and no doubt many of the devs would be willing to do it, but as long as Linus says no, it's sadly not going to happen.

RMS: Proprietary software is unethical, because it denies the user the basic freedom to control her own computer and to cooperate.

http://www.linuxdevcenter.com/pub/a/linux/2004/12/ 22/rms_interview.html

A SourceForge repository for municipal applications would be great.

on KDE4. Interesting stuff. http://www.linuxdevcenter.com/pub/a/linux/2006/01/ 12/kde4.html

[RMS says] anyone using closed-source software (even in niches where no free equivalent exists) is guilty of immorality

That's simply not true, and amounts to a gross misrepresentation of RMS' position.

What he says is: "If you value freedom, you will resist the temptation to use a program that takes away your freedom, whatever technical advantages it may have."

Which is a different thing altogether.

from OreillyNet
http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/oreilly/digitalmed ia/2005/06/22/myth_tv.html
http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/oreilly/digitalmed ia/2005/08/17/myth_tv.html
http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/oreilly/digitalmed ia/2005/11/02/myth-tv.html
http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/oreilly/digitalmed ia/2005/12/07/myth-tv.html

http://www.linuxdevcenter.com/pub/a/linux/2004/05/ 27/linux_media_pc.html
http://www.linuxdevcenter.com/pub/a/linux/2004/12/ 29/mythtv_hacks.html

from OreillyNet
http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/oreilly/digitalmed ia/2005/06/22/myth_tv.html
http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/oreilly/digitalmed ia/2005/08/17/myth_tv.html
http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/oreilly/digitalmed ia/2005/11/02/myth-tv.html
http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/oreilly/digitalmed ia/2005/12/07/myth-tv.html

http://www.linuxdevcenter.com/pub/a/linux/2004/05/ 27/linux_media_pc.html
http://www.linuxdevcenter.com/pub/a/linux/2004/12/ 29/mythtv_hacks.html

Sir, as I formulate my reply I sit here typing at my iMac. You are right. Using this operating system has been one of the most secure experiences I have ever been privileged with. I am more satisfied with my Apple experiences than I have ever been with a Microsoft experience. I will not lie to you on that.

However, as an I.T. professional, I cannot overlook the security flaws that are out there. Think they don't exist? Look around, you'll find them.

You're right. Owning a Mac is probably the safest thing you can do as a computer user worried about their system's security. But it's not because a Mac is more secure by design. You and I have both read articles about Microsoft bashing Linux's security, and the Linux Community striking back. Let me tell you something; OS X is of close kin to any given Linux Distro. In fact, it shares a lot of similarities with Free BSD, and I assure you the Darwin Kernel is not flawless.

The reality is... Your Mac is more secure because you have a kindred community of macintosh users who would rather use their computers for computing. I suspect that the average Mac Programmer capable of writing a virus just doesn't care to. Which is why no one does. /shrug. What do I know, though?

Check out FuseFS, for example (see why it's cool). Or encfs (see O'Reilly article).

Linux is starting to go beyond emulating the Unixes of yore, to create a whole new world of computing.

Federico Biancuzzi is just plainly incompetent on the subject of software licenses. See his old interview to RMS to see how often RMS must clarify basic issues to him, and misuderstands Biancuzzi's dumb questions. I'm not going to read TFA this time.

Stewart: I gather you had worked with both Perl and Python before creating Ruby. What bits of Perl did you incorporate in Ruby?

Matz: A lot. Ruby's class library is an object-oriented reorganization of Perl functionality--plus some Smalltalk and Lisp stuff. I used too much I guess. I shouldn't have inherited $_, $&, and the other, ugly style variables.

http://www.linuxdevcenter.com/pub/a/linux/2001/11/ 29/ruby.html

OK, jumpstart profiles are nice, to get that with Linux you need to serve a kickstart installation config off a dynamic web page. But it's possible, kickstart is pretty impressive.

May I suggest you run MS apps within Windows under an emulator, so that you only run the Windows OS as long as it takes to run one application? I personally use Win4Lin, as it's faster than VMWare, but both work ..

And both avoid encouraging or requiring you run other Windows apps the way dual-boot does.

--dave
[Longer discussion at http://www.linuxdevcenter.com/pub/a/linux/2004/06/ 10/win4lin.html

I don't speak for ESR and won't speculate as to his motives.

I will speak for myself, though. I decided to publish this article because I found it interesting and thought it would start some conversations. Federico was at the conference in Brazil, heard ESR speak, and asked if an interview along these lines would be interesting. Federico also interviewed RMS last December in Freedom, Innovation, and Convenience, also on the O'Reilly Network, also on a site I edit.

You are certainly welcome to believe that there's a sinister plot (of which I am unaware), but I think your theory is completely nutty both in premises and conclusion.

It runs Solaris 9 and Frame, which is the most important thing, as that's my publisher's typesetter. Secondarily it runs all the Sun stuff I use at work.

I'm just waiting for a Solaris 10 keyboard driver and I'll update my second boot partition to 10. It also plays terminal to my Dell Linux box which runs Win4Lin and that Last Remaining Windows Program*, Canadian. QuickTax (;-))

--dave
* See http://www.linuxdevcenter.com/pub/a/linux/2004/06/ 10/win4lin.html

This article speaks of MySQL serving ~1TB in real life, and links to a benchmark which has MySQL scaling as well as Oracle (just one benchmark, but I think it makes the point).

MySQL has a number of features, restrictions and peculiarities which I find irritating, but in terms of raw performance, especially on reads, it doesn't seem to stop when your database gets seriously large. I find PostgreSQL much more pleasant to use, and this article speaks of Fujitsu helping to add Table Spaces to make management of data "into the hundreds of gigabyte" easier, with the implication being that people already have PostgreSQL databases that large, and the feature is basically a bonus. This article also mentions a PostgreSQL database of over a terabyte.

I think you'll find that the limitation is not the software, the limitation is that precious few MySQL DBAs are familiar with databases larger than you can squeeze into a desktop machine (the machine in front of me will take 4x250GB IDE disks for a total of 1TB of storage, for example, and if you had matching SATA drives as many controllers do, put in a new PSU and double that).

The developer.com article mentions that Oracle was harder to tune for larger databases than MySQL, so perhaps this is changing, perhaps we will see more people asking if it's worth spending the extra money for a database that's harder to operate, and no faster. Perhaps it would be cost-effective to spend the money on more servers instead (you can get a pair of jaw-droppingly impressive servers for the price of a single high-end Oracle licence), and rely on redundancy rather than expertise. PostgreSQL supports replication, and there are bolt-ons to do the same for MySQL, kinda-sorta, so it's not an unreasonable proposition and can only get more attractive as these features are improved.

Yeah, it's impossible to add extra database servers.

It's also unlikely that one could find a database server that can cache the results of identical queries when the data hasn't changed, significantly speeding up access to nearly-static data.

It's downright insane to consider using proper cache-control headers and a caching proxy in front of a web server farm.

It's sure too bad that these solutions can't be solved by merely hiring a competent sysadmin who's willing to relocate, 'cause that's be far too convenient. :)

It'd probably be easier to teach everyone in the company good HTML.

more "free"?

The question is "more free for whom".

The BSD licences allow anyone to use the code for any purpose, but that can include taking a free software project proprietary. The GPL guarantees that a project cannot be taken and turned into something proprietary.

RMS and the people who agree with him want to maximize the freedom of the end-user, even at the expense of the developer. The most extreme case of this is that RMS would like to require that all new software be released under GPL.[1] Very, very few people agree with this idea.

Note that the GPL has some cool points. IBM was willing to license some patents to Linux for free, because Linux is GPLed. IBM can allow Linux to use its technology but can still charge money to anyone who wants to use this technology in proprietary applications. There is no chance that IBM will ever release any patented technology under a BSD license, since IBM would no longer be able to charge any royalties on that technology.

Some coders hate the thought that their labour of love might be taken by someone else and turned proprietary. Those coders will prefer to release code under GPL. Other coders like the thought that anyone can do anything with their code, and they might even hate the thought of someone having to re-create similar code because of a licence incompatibility. Those coders will prefer a BSD-style license. Personally, I'm glad we all have this choice.

[1] Google for the whole "Freedom Zero" debate. ESR made a public challenge to RMS: if you could pass a law requring all software to be released under the GPL, would you? RMS declined to answer. It's pretty clear he would, since he rejects the idea that "he who writes the code chooses the licence" (RMS wrote that this idea isn't "Freedom Zero", it is "Power Play Zero" because the coder is exerting power over the poor, poor users). Here, I googled and found it for you: Freedom or Power?

ESR's challenge Freedom, Power, or Confusion?

FreeBSD 1.0 cannot be run unless you have a Unix license. I'm not sure what this would cost you, but SCO is selling licenses to Linux users for $699.00, so my guess is about that. However you need to ask SCO, as they are the only ones legally selling such a license.

For Freebsd 2.0 the requirement of a Unix license was eliminated (there were only 7 files to re-implement).

I belive that requirement is no longer valid. It was based on the licensing of V7/32V Unix which was released by Caldera in January 2002. A later release put it under the original BSD license. Here is a Groklaw article talking about the way SCO tried to later say it was on for the 16bit code and non-commericial.

Since the bits of 1.X that were tainted are now release under a BSD license, well..... Thats why you can once again get FreeBSD 1.X if you look around enough.

BWP

Why, yes in fact. It does:
http://www.linuxdevcenter.com/pub/a/linux/2003/11/ 13/linux_pocket_pc.html

You'd be liable even if you didn't know about it. The terrible part is that if you knew about the infringements, you'd be liable for triple damages. See my article Linux and Patent Risks, for example.

That's absolutely not the goal of the Gnu project. The Gnu project's goal is the abolition of property rights over computer software source code. Freedom has nothing to do with it. In fact, the Gnu advocates require -- or try to require, anyway --people to release software only under a restrictive license that prohibits whole classes of reuse, rather than simply contributing it to the public domain.

RMS, who started the GNU project, would disagree with you. In a recent interview with Jeremy Andrews of KernelTrap.org, RMS was quite clear that "freedom is the main goal" for free software. RMS wants to give as many people software freedom as possible. But it's clear that you're not questioning that, you're really challenging the notion of freedom as though anything short of absolute freedom is insufficient.

Placing a program in the public domain does make that program free software, but it "doesn't protect the freedom of all users. It allows middlemen to make the software proprietary, which means they distribute the software to others but without the freedom." (quoted from an interview with Federico Biancuzzi where he was referring to the new BSD license, but the same thing applies to software in the public domain). RMS isn't just thinking about the freedom of the users of the program, but the freedom of the users of derivative works as well. We can't have all possible freedoms, some of them conflict. So we have to make a choice between which freedoms we want to preserve and which freedoms we're willing to trade away. The FSF describes this situation with regard to the GPL and to driving (which I've summarized elsewhere on this site).

Placing software in the public domain is insufficient if one argues from the angle of absolutism because, in some countries, computer programming is regulated by patent law as well. A public domain program may have implemented a patented idea, ironically restricting what people are allowed to do with that program.

Finally, there is no requirement to "release software only under a restrictive license" (you're undoubtedly talking about the GNU General Public License), because the GPL doesn't compel distribution of verbatim or modified programs. Distributing complete source code to the GPL-covered program only kicks in for those who distribute the covered program. Compared to the default of copyright (which is to say "no" to virtually everything it regulates), the GPL is quite permissive. The GPL grants rights copyright otherwise withheld by default. Those who advocate for free software recognize a variety of free software licenses and placing the work in the public domain as ways to increase user's freedom. The question is who's freedom is being increased and can we do more to increase other user's freedom too.

always choose OSS even when it doesn't work or do what you need it to do.
Where did he say that? Sounds like a straw-man.

...just what he has explained one thousand times in everyone of his conferences.

Quoting and interview by Federico Biancuzzi:

FB: Today Linux is just a kernel, so you still have direct control over other parts of the OS. That's why the name GNU/Linux for the complete OS.

RMS: That isn't what the name GNU/Linux means; it has nothing to do with that. The name GNU/Linux means that the system started out as GNU, with Linux added.

Nowadays, the system includes thousands of packages developed by thousands of developers, but at the base it is still GNU with Linux added.

• you're not tied to one platform, one manufacturer or a handful of languages; and

• You can find out exactly what each function and parameter does; and

• You can easily modify or extend anything (and no DMCA worries); and

• You don't have to give away any rights before you start using it.

These advantages are usually enough to handsomely compensate for any peripheral shortcomings (e.g. no force-feedback API, slightly smaller texturing envelope).

What about CinePaint?

Here's a linuxdevcenter article

I've been able to get connectivity on my Linux laptop with Verizon and a Samsung A650 phone. Even been able to put on a custom MIDI ringtone with BitPim.

Some specifics about set up can be found here.

The are lots of articles on the web about recording with open source software. Also check out Dave Phillips's site and his articles in Linux Journal.

<a href="http://www.linuxdevcenter.com/pub/a/linux/20 03/12/11/flightgear.html">FlightGear</a>

<URL:http://www.linuxdevcenter.com/pub/a/linux/200 3/12/11/flightgear.html>