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• Roadguy - A funny, intelligent blog about transportation in Minnesota.
• Minnesota Public Radio - Check to see if I want to call into any shows that day.
• Minneapolis E-Democracy Issue Forum - Not a blog or web forum, a mailing list. Mailing lists are way better than web forums. Lots of good local information on events, politics, etc.
• St. Paul E-Democracy Issue Forum - Another mailing list.
• Linux Weekly News - Every Thursday
• Polinaut - When the mood strikes me and/or I want to see if anything I did up at the Minnesota Capitol made the news.
• The Strib - Only for the netlets (letters to the editor posted online only). For everything else it's strictly reading the hardcopy for me. It's too hard on the eyes to read from a screen.

If you subscribe to Linux Weekly News (LWN), LWN has an analysis article about the GPL3.

Several discussions of Linux Botnets:

http://lwn.net/Articles/222153/
http://blogs.securiteam.com/index.php/archives/815
http://www.networkworld.com/community/?q=www.deb.r adcliff.com

Novell doesn't really care about the product or the customer.

Oh wait a minute - that would be Canonical.

Perhaps your bias is getting in the way of your fairness?

Researchers in the Information Assurance Research Group of NSA worked with Secure Computing Corporation (SCC) to develop a strong, flexible mandatory access control architecture based on Type Enforcement, a mechanism first developed for the LOCK system. NSA and SCC developed two Mach-based prototypes of the architecture: DTMach and DTOS (http://www.cs.utah.edu/flux/dtos/). NSA and SCC then worked with the University of Utah's Flux research group to transfer the architecture to the Fluke research operating system. During this transfer, the architecture was enhanced to provide better support for dynamic security policies. This enhanced architecture was named Flask (http://www.cs.utah.edu/flux/flask/). NSA has now integrated the Flask architecture into the Linux operating system to transfer the technology to a larger developer and user community.

Linksys... they created a router and used linux code (iptables for example). Later they had to release the whole firmware as GPL code, that's why we have free firmware for linksys routers. http://lwn.net/Articles/73848/

Except: should they use bk [...]?

Thats never worth the risk

You might want to consider who paid for writing the kernel.

How much effort was put in to fixing bugs by people paid for by Red Hat.

Software developed by Red Hat includes projects such as Network Manager, Totem etc.

This all costs money and Red Hat funds a lot of development. I do not see Ubuntu on the following list:
Top (kernel) lines changed by employer
(Unknown) 740990 29.5%
Red Hat 361539 14.4%
(None) 239888 9.6%
IBM 200473 8.0%
QLogic 91834 3.7%
Novell 91594 3.6%
Intel 78041 3.1%
MIPS Technologies 58857 2.3%
Nokia 39676 1.6%
SANPeople 36038 1.4%

http://lwn.net/Articles/222773/

Then maybe AMD and Intel will finally focus on the problem of interrupts...

IBM is currently involved in hundreds of open source projects, ranging from small stuff all the way up to stuff like Xen, Eclipse, and a huge amount of code for the Linux kernel. Claiming that IBM contributes nothing of value to open source is an outright lie.

http://xml.coverpages.org/ni2005-08-10-a.html

http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/76034

http://lwn.net/Articles/163038/

http://www.patent-commons.org/

http://www.openinventionnetwork.com/

I do wonder why the FSF doesn't take the moral high-ground and let Linus be. If he doesn't want to be saved, why force him?

The FSF has consistently taken the high moral ground. They have always said that Torvalds (and everyone one else) has a right to use any license they choose for the software they write. The FSF even helped Tivo develop the loophole that let Tivo adhere the the letter of the GPLv2 while violating its spirit.

The FSF has not tried to force Torvalds to change to the GPLv3. What I object to is the anti-GPLv3 FUD that Torvalds launched. For example, he completely mis-read the anti-DRM provisions of an earlier version of the GPLv3 and claimed that everyone would have have to give up their private signing keys. This led to the "OMG! Linus can't sign his kernels" furore. Torvalds later retracted this outlandish claim but refrained from undoing the damage he had caused.

Torvalds choose to very publicly criticize the GPLv3 without first carefully reading it or sharing his criticism with the FSF (who would have helped him corrected his errors). The FSF did not respond in kind. How can you possibly interpret these events as the FSF relinquishing the high moral ground?

The FSF wants to alter its license and definition of freedom, not the other way around.

It is true that the FSF wants to fix the GPL now that the Tivo exploit is in the wild, but it is not true that the FSF is changing their definition of freedom. Their intent has been to make the GPL the least restrictive license possible that ensures that re-distributors are required to pass on the four freedoms. This has not changed.

Although I see the FSF point to OSS and Linus as 'heretics', ...

This is over the top and unfair. The FSF has not called OSS or Torvalds 'heretics'. Your saying so falsely implies that the FSF is filled with evangelical, religious-like zeal. If you have even a shred of evidence to support your absurd implication, please provide it.

Isn't it arrogant of the FSF to force compliance outside the realm of software?

I disagree with your premise that the FSF is trying to force compliance outside the realm of software. [We stopped beating our wives years ago.] The anti-tivoization clauses of the GPLv3 prevent re-distributors from using a combination of hardware and software to thwart the intent of the GPL by not passing on the freedoms they enjoyed when they received the software.

As I have said many times elsewhere, even the Tivo is hardware compatible with the GPLv3. In an ACM article, Jim Barton, the Tivo CTO says:

Each TiVo DVR includes a secure microprocessor to which are delegated all public-key-based operations. This secure microprocessor contains a unique public/private key pair for each DVR, so that there are no global secrets for DVR authentication.

Therefore, all Tivo need do to become GPLv3 compatible is to share the private key that belongs to each Tivo device with the owner of that device. No hardware changes would be required. Nor would this compromise their security model unless you insist that the Tivo owners are a security risk to their own machines (and no one else's).

How could anyone prevent the creation of a software license?

I would accomplish the task by spreading alarmist lies and misunderstandings about the license (many of which you, AlXtreme, have repeated in your most recent post). Then I would get a group of prominent and influential members of the FOSS community to sign a position paper outlining the "Dangers and Problems" with the new license, concluding with:

ESR has so far refused to clarify if he was running the current stable relase Fedora Core 6, or the completely bleeding-edge rawhide

Raw Hide Can Be a Bit Tough to Chew on So Run at Your Own Risk (and Enjoyment) These releases have not been quality tested by Red Hat's Quality Assurance team. They may not boot. If they boot, they may not install. If they install, they may not do anything other then waste CPU cycles. If anything breaks, you most assuredly own the many fragments which will be littered across your floor. It may not be possible to upgrade from Red Hat to Raw Hide, from Raw Hide to Red Hat, or from Raw Hide to Raw Hide! If a stable upgrade path is important to you, please do not use Raw Hide. DO NOT USE THESE RELEASES FOR ANY WORK WHERE YOU CARE ABOUT YOUR APPLICATION RUNNING, THE ACCURACY OF YOUR DATA, THE INTEGRITY OF YOUR NETWORK, OR ANY OTHER PURPOSE FOR WHICH A RESPONSIBLE HUMAN WOULD USE A COMPUTER. (But then again what would be the fun of hacking Linux if there wasn't some risk involved. ;-)....)

Or if he was running one of the not quite as unstable but still a work in progress fc7-test series (which are less buggy than rawhide (whose purpose is to be buggy and fun)) which exist for the purpose of trying to stabilize things for the next release.

But, he did post this on the fedora-devel list which is expressly and only for the purpose of being used by people that are running these UNSTABLE, TESTING VERSIONS THAT ARE NOT PRODUCTION READY AS CLEARLY INDICATED.

ESR knows the value of reporting exactly what went wrong, which is why so many people pointed him to his own "smart questions FAQ". Add to this that he EXPRESSLY did something that he was told not to do and as a result effed up his own system.

As a result of all of the above it can reasonably be assumed that he's deliberately trying to create the impression that Fedora Core is unstable and that the package management system makes it difficult to upgrade individual components. I can put my hand on my heart and say unequivocally after years of using Debian and Fedora Core (and latterly Gentoo), that this is complete and utter rubbish.

ESR is trolling. Possibly for petty motives like personal attention (how pathetic), and possibly for monetary gain (to boost the Ubuntu/Linspire -- Canonical/Freespire empire). Whichever it is his content-free rant should be taken as FUD and he should have his arse kicked from here to Redmond for spreading it.

There's a bit of discussion here explaining reasons why the patch didn't get accepted into the kernel.

Linus' blessing is neither sufficient nor necessary for any fork of Linux, GPL3 or otherwise. It's not sufficient, because the vast majority of code in Linux is not "Copyright (c) Linus Torvalds". It's not necessary, because the only permission anyone needs is that which has already been granted by the individual copyright holders, as stated in the comments of the individual files.

Linus Torvalds doesn't have any special legal status with respect to Linux. He holds the "Linux(TM)" trademark, and he currently maintains the tree that is arguably the most popular among Linux kernel developers, but that's about it. He himself has said as much on numerous occasions.

• Although it doesn't fix everything, it fixes the most serious problems, with the huge bonus that it's simple to understand, easy to implement, and doesn't require a lot of tinkering in the future.
• It ensures that truly new breakthroughs (say, antigravity or Mr. Fusion) or breakthroughs in sleepy areas for which there isn't much patent activity (steam-powered cars) would still receive maximum patent protection, preserving strong incentives for first movers in those areas. (FWIW, I favor setting the term in median-activity categories at around 12 years, with slower ones going up to 25 years, and more frenetic ones falling to as little as 3 years.)
• In areas of furiously developing technology, the falling term reacts automatically to the pace of the market, adding a market-driven component to the patent process. This fundamental disconnect between the patent system and the state of the market (which largely drives and is driven by the pace of technological development) is the largest reason our patent system seems problematic (and to some degree, anachronistic) today.
• It also ensures that as more and more people are issued valid, but possibly trivial or copycat patents in a patent "land rush", the value of those patents begins to fall rapidly as the terms decrease, possibly to as little as three years in very rapidly developing areas. (In today's world of Internet and software patents, anything longer than five years is darn near forever, anyway, but these shorter terms would keep those systems, methods, and processes from being unusable (for decades) by others wanting to (wisely) avoid deliberate infringement.) A bit of ambiguity about the term your patent application will buy you in a hot area is an intentional damper on excessive speculative patents.
• As markets cool down and the number of patents falls off, the terms begin to increase again, creating some incentive for a continued incremental improvement or renewed activity in more mature markets.
• Because it's market-based, it doesn't require prescient knowledge or the implementation of rules that will themselves someday be completely out-of step with the environment around them.
• Similarly, Step Two places an effective limit on the number

This is two week old news: See the announcement of the FSFE and the corresponding LWN.net article by PJ of GROKLAW. That two weeks old article also illustrates why this is FUD.

See FSFE's homepage: The FLA was drafted and reviewed by some of the best copyright experts available -- including Eben Moglen. The author on linux.com seemed to have little clue about the facts, it is easy to dismantle his article with just the links above.

So if you are interested in the facts, check out the links above.

CAB/OGB Position Paper # 20070207 version 0.6
Topic: Should OpenSolaris be dual licensed via CDDL and GPLv3

http://www.opensolaris.org/jive/thread.jspa?thread ID=23699&tstart=0
http://lwn.net/Articles/221543/

I know you were joking, but actually removing inline functions can make the kernel faster in some cases, and the effect on kernel size is dramatic:

http://lwn.net/Articles/82495/
http://lwn.net/Articles/166172/

And let me say, LWN kicks ass. :)

I know you were joking, but actually removing inline functions can make the kernel faster in some cases, and the effect on kernel size is dramatic:

http://lwn.net/Articles/82495/
http://lwn.net/Articles/166172/

And let me say, LWN kicks ass. :)

I know you were joking, but actually removing inline functions can make the kernel faster in some cases, and the effect on kernel size is dramatic:

http://lwn.net/Articles/82495/
http://lwn.net/Articles/166172/

And let me say, LWN kicks ass. :)

you mean tuxissa?

Reasons that you are wrong, #8: Generalising From Self.
Specifics: this "EVERYONE" you speak of isn't made of copies of you. They have different needs, and different "best tools" to suit them.

Also, I had to switch over storage to using Windows, because I got hit by the file trashing race condition bug in recent kernels. I'm in the process of recompiling the latest kernel release as the team say the issue is resolved (details on the cause here) but I'm definitely not going to trust it until I've done some test runs with dummy data. Whatever can go wrong with your system, losing your data is an extremely bad thing that breaks all sorts of trust. You can firewall, encrypt, all sorts to protect against data theft, something that involves a human coming in and taking your data. But when the system loses it all by itself?

I'm still going back to linux as soon as my files make it to disk ALL the time, but I'm not getting rid of windows. They're both imperfect in different ways, but between the two of them, I can do everything I need to.

"That might be because taxation actually removes our money from our own use, whereas duplicating digital data does nothing of the sort?"

Well open-source is a "common good" and since it's digital there's no problem with Tivo using it for their purposes.

"You're right though, it's not stealing. "Taking money/possessions from a victim under threat of violence" Sounds more like armed robbery."

Except for the difference that in armed robbery you can't leave the situation. You can leave whatever country that ask for taxes (pretty much ALL countries), and move to an island without a government.

Similarly, when you hear that the GPL is viral and can force proprietary code to become GPL, which a couple of lawyers have been saying, you'll know that isn't true. If you steal GPL code, you can expect an enforcement action. But this action can only be enforcement of a license, not a contract, and a forced release under the GPL can't be imposed on you under copyright law. It's not one of the choices, as Professor Moglen has explained. You do have a choice under the GPL: you can stop using the stolen code and write your own, or you can decide you'd rather release under the GPL. But the choice is yours. If you say "I choose neither," the court can impose an injunction to stop you from further distribution, but it won't order your code released under the GPL. Your code remains yours, as you can see, even in a worst case scenario.

Of course, you could avoid all such troubles in the first place by not stealing GPL code to begin with. But if something happens inadvertently and some rogue employee sneaks some GPL code into your proprietary product, the sky isn't falling. It's a manageable risk and a solvable problem. No one wants to steal your code in retaliation or force it to be something you don't want it to be. The GPL is unequivocally a license, and that's the truth.

I didn't say a license is a contract. A license is part of a contract

It might be, it might not. There may be a contract in addition to the licence, there may not. Most proprietary EULAs are structured as contracts so they can try to restrict activities not restricted by copyright, eg. publishing benchmarks.

For most FOSS licences, however, there is no consideration, no requirement to agree to terms (eg. as required by UCITA), and hence no contract.

The GPL is specifically structured to _not_ be a contract - see eg. http://lwn.net/articles/61292.


Copyright law does not outlaw adding terms when redistributing copies, providing the redistribution is permitted by the copyright holder.


I agree with this - but the conclusion that it is ok then follows from copyright law not prohibiting it, not from the licence actually being a contract.

then you are not a kernel developer, are you ? if you were one, you probably would be glad that there is no fixed abi/api.
this would be similar like calling every application developer that runs on windows a "windows developer".
if you were a kernel developer, your driver would be in kernel, and it would be updated for most changes, at least so i've heard.

as for what benefits not-fixed abi/api gives...
i think http://lwn.net/Articles/159313/ has it quite well put (also see comments).

rephrasing what i can remember now (that article probably contains even more) in regards to benefits - but i'll list benefits from a user viewpoint, not a kernel dev viewpoint, where benefits are quite obvious.

- faster, a lot faster fixes than for closed-source drivers;
- fixes at all. a lot of vendors just don't fix some problems;
- no need to toss out hardware because vendor has decided to stop supporting it (which happens pretty fast in most cases);
- faster driver availability for new kernel versions (no need to wait for nvidia, for example, to release new version);
- availability of new functionality (like power management and probably a bunch of other things);
- i suppose also changes that improve security, stability & performance are easier to make.
- driver availability on other architectures (maybe less important for average user, but there were some problematic drivers on amd64 - and i suppose, having usb hw work on some more exotic hw would significantly ease the quest to build home complected low-heat and silent media computer, for example)
- much better support (vendors tend to be less interested how their product works than most kernel driver devs) and bigger chances to diagnose the problem - solving problems with proprietary kernel modules is no fun...

and a bigger flexibility and better maintainability of kernel drivers gives kernel developers more time to work on other issues, which in turn give users a lot of indirect benefits :)

so, is your inconvenience (as a proprietary kernel module developer) less important than real kernel developers' and users' (read - _my_ ;) ) inconvenience ? sorry, but i think it is.
proprietary hardware drivers are bad for users in longer term than "now", so if some aspect that is convenient for kernel developers also works as a motivator to get drivers in kernel - well, that is another one good thing.
it's not like hw developers will run screaming in joy to write closed drivers if abi/api is made stable. those who are interested, write either closed or opensource drivers anyway, for others a decision like that is more political than technical (actually, providing one or two interested developers with reference hw and documentation would in most cases turn out much better drivers for much less money spent ;) )

AFAIK there are plenty. A more import question is whether there are any LSB applications. AFAIK there are two: Real Player and MySQL. Except that MySQL are dropping support for generic Linux distributions, so we're back to one. :)

Didn't read this time either - did you? There are just some portions of the code released under the GPL. Older versions of the client has been released under the GPL - but it has been a couple of years since then. As for the server, AFAICT not much - if anything at all - has been previously released under the GPL.

Is it so important to belittle an initiative that you could care less about the actual circumstances? For real nonpartisan info: http://lwn.net/Articles/212810/

I decided to bite the bullet and just see what life without BK looks like. So far it's a gray and bleak world ;)

So the three years with BK are definitely not wasted: I'm convinced it caused us to do things in better ways, and one of the things I'm looking at is to make sure that those things continue to work.

So I just wanted to say that I'm personally very happy with BK, and with Larry.

'"It will have the ability to restrict your network access if you have a down-level machine..."

Translation: "You WILL upgrade all of your machines to Vista, or Microsoft will artificially degrade their performance." It's called "market development."

Those M$ asshats are actually going to try to sell this as a NAC feature, when it's nothing but another license fee grab.'

WTF are you talking about? This allows network admins (the people who run your company's DHCP server to be precise) to collect (insecure and not entirely trustable) information about your computer's setup when you plug it in and set it to use DHCP. This allows them to stop you from bringing a home laptop if it lacks certain Vista patches. Alternatively, they can do it the old way, which is MAC address filtering. Then, you bring the laptop to them, they judge its security, and then (if you succeed) add you to the list of allowed MAC addresses.

The other thing, CTCP, is (as mentioned in the article) an extension to TCP which (presumably) makes use of methods which weren't known (or suitable) when TCP was originally written, to communicate over the network at higher speed. If the other side doesn't support it, normal TCP is used. CTCP also (according to the article) is not so aggressive as to take large parts of your network bandwidth when normal TCP is also being transferred, i.e. it won't clog up your tubes as soon as you have a few Vista machines, requiring you to switch everything else to Vista too. It won't.

An implementation of it for Linux is apparently at http://lwn.net/Articles/185074/.

Just close your applications, then turn the machine off. With modern transaction-oriented filesystems, you're highly unlikely to lose anything.

Go ahead, please make me look like a fuckwit by telling me about wonderful Linux features I've never heard of. As it is, Googling turns up this, which indicates that the Linux kernel has some support for capabilities but it's really clunky and nobody uses it. (To be fair, the same accusation could be leveled at Windows...)

Very interesting how ecryptfs uses the TPM module for encryption. While there is plenty to worry about regarding treacherous computing, it is nice to see that the TPM can be put to uses that actually bolster privacy. This still does not prevent a possible future dystopia, but it still goes to show that devices such as TPM are not necessarily "pure evil."

http://lwn.net/Articles/211216/

Much much easier to read.

Nice explanation here.

... is this:

The purpose of human language is communicate with other human beings

You are operating under the assumption that human language fulfills no other function beyond functional communication. There is plenty of evidence that language defines culture. Speakers of different languages do often see the world slightly differently. If you want everyone to think the same way, one language is a great idea. Personally, I prefer a more heterogeneous world, despite the friction languages create.

Computer languages are instructions to a computer, they aren't a human communication medium

That's an interesting interpretation of computer languages, given that they are created by humans and used by humans to create software. Choice of language informs what the human programmer can create, and has a strong effect on broader human culture. As Lessig argues, code is speech.

You seem to be looking at language as if it merely is a conduit for information. If we were all computers, programmed merely to pass information between each other, that would be the case. For humans, I think it serves many other purposes, and the profusion of languages is good for humanity. Homogeneousness, while it seems like a cure for our maladies, doesn't necessarily help us. Americans speak English; that hasn't stopped violence, disagreement, or other forms of conflict. I would also argue that American culture is so strong in part because it is continuously enriched by influences from other cultures and their languages.

To gauge Robert Cresanti's comments, it is important to first grasp where he comes from. So who is Robert Cresanti? He is a former Vice President of Public Policy for the BSA. Yes, that BSA. Before that, he was the Senior Vice President and General Counsel for the ITAA.

Why is this important? Both of these are groups that are all about the interests of big corporations. The BSA, in particular, protects those interests without regard for anyone in its path. So when someone of this mindset says they need to import more workers, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out where he's coming from. There are two basic ways that companies in the US could increase the number of qualified workers. One is to increase salaries significantly enough to entice capable students of pursuing a career in IT. The second is to import workers from other countries often willing to work for the same or less.

For government, the two basic ways are to increase educational funding to lower the barrier for students to pursue higher education in IT and the second is to ease restrictions on workers from other countries to work in the US.

The second option is the quickest and "cheapest" solution from both a private and government perspective. The fact that he is promoting this as a solution shows that he thinks short term and not long term. It also means he thinks from the perspective of what is best for big business and not the American worker. This isn't totally surprising considering where he comes from and who got him in his position.

Presumably the best defense against claims of stolen code is to do what the Linux kernel folks are doing and require contributors to certify that they have the right to provide the code. Here are the current rules for submitting code for the kernel, and here is the Developer's Certificate of Origin. Significant contributions should also be well publicized so that anyone claiming infringment is forced to bring it up soon, before people come to rely on it. In this case, it would then be Novell's problem, not the community's, if Microsoft claims that the code is theirs.

I don't know enough to say who's right, but here's Phil Zimmermann's acount of PGP history. Also check out Adam Back's PGP timeline, which he warns is probably inaccurate. Microtimes columnist's recollections of PGP history.

The comments at http://lwn.net/Articles/208617/ explain that quite well, I think. I thought the same as you initially, but it looks like the court did his homework in fact.

As long as I work on the Fedora Project, Fedora will never compromise on the essential liberties of FOSS nor will it betray the community. But the price of liberty is not free, nor is it comfortable. And unfortunately, some "leaders" of our community are willing to compromise liberty for short-term convenience. I am disgusted by people like this, and by Novell's betrayal of the community today.

Novell has effectively traded Long-Term Liberty for Short-Term Safety.

Red Hat supports causes that matter like providing the original seed money for Creative Commons. Or being a key partner in the anti-software patent movement during the miraculous last-minute turnaround at the European Parliament last year. I am proud to be part of an organization that demonstrates such moral and ethical commitment.

But ultimately, Red Hat cannot change the world alone. That is why the Fedora Project exists. We want to enable the community to work together to improve FOSS at a rapid pace, in partnership with the large and consistent contributions from our engineers. We strongly believe that this is the most effective way for the entire FOSS movement to advance. Yes, we made some big mistakes in our community relationship earlier, but we are learning, and continue to improve at an ever accelerating pace.

For these reasons that I urge the FOSS community to support the Fedora Project through volunteer contributions of time and effort. Or if you lack time to contribute, please consider monetary donations toward any of the shared causes that we are fighting for.

http://wtogami.livejournal.com/11305.html
Please read more in the original version in this blog entry.

Warren Togami
Founder, Fedora Project
Software Engineer, Red Hat, Inc.

As long as I work on the Fedora Project, Fedora will never compromise on the essential liberties of FOSS nor will it betray the community. But the price of liberty is not free, nor is it comfortable. And unfortunately, some "leaders" of our community are willing to compromise liberty for short-term convenience. I am disgusted by people like this, and by Novell's betrayal of the community today.

Novell has effectively traded Long-Term Liberty for Short-Term Safety.

Red Hat supports causes that matter like providing the original seed money for Creative Commons. Or being a key partner in the anti-software patent movement during the miraculous last-minute turnaround at the European Parliament last year. I am proud to be part of an organization that demonstrates such moral and ethical commitment.

But ultimately, Red Hat cannot change the world alone. That is why the Fedora Project exists. We want to enable the community to work together to improve FOSS at a rapid pace, in partnership with the large and consistent contributions from our engineers. We strongly believe that this is the most effective way for the entire FOSS movement to advance. Yes, we made some big mistakes in our community relationship earlier, but we are learning, and continue to improve at an ever accelerating pace.

For these reasons that I urge the FOSS community to support the Fedora Project through volunteer contributions of time and effort. Or if you lack time to contribute, please consider monetary donations toward any of the shared causes that we are fighting for.

http://wtogami.livejournal.com/11305.html
Please read more in the original version in this blog entry.

Warren Togami
Founder, Fedora Project
Software Engineer, Red Hat, Inc.

As long as I work on the Fedora Project, Fedora will never compromise on the essential liberties of FOSS nor will it betray the community. But the price of liberty is not free, nor is it comfortable. And unfortunately, some "leaders" of our community are willing to compromise liberty for short-term convenience. I am disgusted by people like this, and by Novell's betrayal of the community today.

Novell has effectively traded Long-Term Liberty for Short-Term Safety.

Red Hat supports causes that matter like providing the original seed money for Creative Commons. Or being a key partner in the anti-software patent movement during the miraculous last-minute turnaround at the European Parliament last year. I am proud to be part of an organization that demonstrates such moral and ethical commitment.

But ultimately, Red Hat cannot change the world alone. That is why the Fedora Project exists. We want to enable the community to work together to improve FOSS at a rapid pace, in partnership with the large and consistent contributions from our engineers. We strongly believe that this is the most effective way for the entire FOSS movement to advance. Yes, we made some big mistakes in our community relationship earlier, but we are learning, and continue to improve at an ever accelerating pace.

For these reasons that I urge the FOSS community to support the Fedora Project through volunteer contributions of time and effort. Or if you lack time to contribute, please consider monetary donations toward any of the shared causes that we are fighting for.

http://wtogami.livejournal.com/11305.html
Please read more in the original version in this blog entry.

Warren Togami
Founder, Fedora Project
Software Engineer, Red Hat, Inc.

http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=200611021 75508403
"Novell has effectively traded Long-Term Liberty for Short-Term Safety."
- me 2006/11/02

The Primary Goal of the Fedora Project:
Rapid Progress of Free & Open Source Software.

Red Hat engineering invests millions every year in FOSS development. These developers contribute in a great many ways to stimulate growth in the FOSS ecosystem and the community itself. Red Hat makes this investment for three key reasons:

• It makes business sense: A healthy relationship with community builds quality products faster, and with lower expense. It is indeed possible to make money and not compromise on values.
• Perhaps the technology leaders who made many of these key FOSS improvements are best able to support business customers.
• Many of the people at Red Hat believe in the ethical values of FOSS and the benefit that it brings to society.

As long as I work on the Fedora Project, Fedora will never compromise on the essential liberties of FOSS nor will it betray the community. But the price of liberty is not free, nor is it comfortable. And unfortunately, some "leaders" of our community are willing to compromise liberty for short-term convenience. I am disgusted by people like this, and by Novell's betrayal of the community today.

Red Hat supports causes that matter like providing the original seed money for Creative Commons. Or being a key partner in the anti-software patent movement during the miraculous last-minute turnaround at the European Parliament last year. I am proud to be part of an organization that demonstrates such moral and ethical commitment.

But ultimately, Red Hat cannot change the world alone. That is why the Fedora Project exists. We want to enable the community to work together to improve FOSS at a rapid pace, in partnership with the large and consistent contributions from our engineers. We strongly believe that this is the most effective way for the entire FOSS movement to advance. Yes, we made some big mistakes in our community relationship earlier, but we are learning, and continue to improve at an ever accelerating pace.

For these reasons that I urge the FOSS community to support the Fedora Project through volunteer contributions of time and effort. Or if you lack time to contribute, please consider monetary donations toward any of the shared causes that we are fighting for.

Contribute to Fedora
The Fedora Project needs your contributions in many ways. If you know how to make RPM packages, you can become a maintainer in Fedora Extras where you can contribute your favorite FOSS software into the central repository for all to benefit. We have many opportunities for even non-developers to get involved. We need help with things like Documentation, Artwork, or promoting Fedora in the Ambassadors team. Even simply using Fedora, responsibly reporting bugs in Bugzilla, and helping each other helps the entire community.

Donations
The Fedora Project does not need your money[1], but I hope that you would consider donating to one of the major charities that fight for your liber

http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=200611021 75508403
"Novell has effectively traded Long-Term Liberty for Short-Term Safety."
- me 2006/11/02

The Primary Goal of the Fedora Project:
Rapid Progress of Free & Open Source Software.

Red Hat engineering invests millions every year in FOSS development. These developers contribute in a great many ways to stimulate growth in the FOSS ecosystem and the community itself. Red Hat makes this investment for three key reasons:

• It makes business sense: A healthy relationship with community builds quality products faster, and with lower expense. It is indeed possible to make money and not compromise on values.
• Perhaps the technology leaders who made many of these key FOSS improvements are best able to support business customers.
• Many of the people at Red Hat believe in the ethical values of FOSS and the benefit that it brings to society.

As long as I work on the Fedora Project, Fedora will never compromise on the essential liberties of FOSS nor will it betray the community. But the price of liberty is not free, nor is it comfortable. And unfortunately, some "leaders" of our community are willing to compromise liberty for short-term convenience. I am disgusted by people like this, and by Novell's betrayal of the community today.

Red Hat supports causes that matter like providing the original seed money for Creative Commons. Or being a key partner in the anti-software patent movement during the miraculous last-minute turnaround at the European Parliament last year. I am proud to be part of an organization that demonstrates such moral and ethical commitment.

But ultimately, Red Hat cannot change the world alone. That is why the Fedora Project exists. We want to enable the community to work together to improve FOSS at a rapid pace, in partnership with the large and consistent contributions from our engineers. We strongly believe that this is the most effective way for the entire FOSS movement to advance. Yes, we made some big mistakes in our community relationship earlier, but we are learning, and continue to improve at an ever accelerating pace.

For these reasons that I urge the FOSS community to support the Fedora Project through volunteer contributions of time and effort. Or if you lack time to contribute, please consider monetary donations toward any of the shared causes that we are fighting for.

Contribute to Fedora
The Fedora Project needs your contributions in many ways. If you know how to make RPM packages, you can become a maintainer in Fedora Extras where you can contribute your favorite FOSS software into the central repository for all to benefit. We have many opportunities for even non-developers to get involved. We need help with things like Documentation, Artwork, or promoting Fedora in the Ambassadors team. Even simply using Fedora, responsibly reporting bugs in Bugzilla, and helping each other helps the entire community.

Donations
The Fedora Project does not need your money[1], but I hope that you would consider donating to one of the major charities that fight for your liber

http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=200611021 75508403
"Novell has effectively traded Long-Term Liberty for Short-Term Safety."
- me 2006/11/02

The Primary Goal of the Fedora Project:
Rapid Progress of Free & Open Source Software.

Red Hat engineering invests millions every year in FOSS development. These developers contribute in a great many ways to stimulate growth in the FOSS ecosystem and the community itself. Red Hat makes this investment for three key reasons:

• It makes business sense: A healthy relationship with community builds quality products faster, and with lower expense. It is indeed possible to make money and not compromise on values.
• Perhaps the technology leaders who made many of these key FOSS improvements are best able to support business customers.
• Many of the people at Red Hat believe in the ethical values of FOSS and the benefit that it brings to society.

As long as I work on the Fedora Project, Fedora will never compromise on the essential liberties of FOSS nor will it betray the community. But the price of liberty is not free, nor is it comfortable. And unfortunately, some "leaders" of our community are willing to compromise liberty for short-term convenience. I am disgusted by people like this, and by Novell's betrayal of the community today.

Red Hat supports causes that matter like providing the original seed money for Creative Commons. Or being a key partner in the anti-software patent movement during the miraculous last-minute turnaround at the European Parliament last year. I am proud to be part of an organization that demonstrates such moral and ethical commitment.

But ultimately, Red Hat cannot change the world alone. That is why the Fedora Project exists. We want to enable the community to work together to improve FOSS at a rapid pace, in partnership with the large and consistent contributions from our engineers. We strongly believe that this is the most effective way for the entire FOSS movement to advance. Yes, we made some big mistakes in our community relationship earlier, but we are learning, and continue to improve at an ever accelerating pace.

For these reasons that I urge the FOSS community to support the Fedora Project through volunteer contributions of time and effort. Or if you lack time to contribute, please consider monetary donations toward any of the shared causes that we are fighting for.

Contribute to Fedora
The Fedora Project needs your contributions in many ways. If you know how to make RPM packages, you can become a maintainer in Fedora Extras where you can contribute your favorite FOSS software into the central repository for all to benefit. We have many opportunities for even non-developers to get involved. We need help with things like Documentation, Artwork, or promoting Fedora in the Ambassadors team. Even simply using Fedora, responsibly reporting bugs in Bugzilla, and helping each other helps the entire community.

Donations
The Fedora Project does not need your money[1], but I hope that you would consider donating to one of the major charities that fight for your liber

So, I guess that little high-profile dinner some time back wherein ms got assurances that windows would win in China were not to be. Seems ms is being mshafted.

They wanted pervasiveness/pervasion. Well, they have pervAsian. Yeh,

Red Flag Linux?: maybe 5 RMB

A Linux distro in most places?: what you want to pay for it

windows, maybe even Vista? PRICE-LESS

windows will be "everywhere", but it will be "priceless!", not "priceless"

A First Look at Asianux 1.0
http://lwn.net/Articles/90823/

Asianux, recent stuff (need javascript on to see the site... sheesh....)
http://www.asianux.com/asianux.do

Microsoft Fights Piracy In China, Linux Wins
http://informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml ?articleID=170700943

Red Flag Linux (from 2004-ish)
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe =UTF-8&q=red+flag+linux&btnG=Search

Korea, China, Japan start open-source collaboration (from 2004)
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/software/0,1000000121,3915 0645,00.htm

Unseating a software giant
http://www.smh.com.au/news/Management-Focus/Unseat ing-a-software-giant/2005/06/13/1118514959694.html

Yes siree... ms is could have a hard time as Asia reasserts its position in the world. They are NOT going to "meekly fork over billions of dollars year after year to microsoft..."

Hmmmm...

indicator of a project doomed to failure by apathy.

• The tax writeoff aspect needs to be emphasized. While we can all get a warm fuzzy in the midriff about the kids, it's that pleasure jolt in the wallet from getting mugged by the taxman that affects behavior.
• The driver issue bears review. http://lwn.net/Articles/203562/#Comments explores some of the issues in better detail than anywhere else I've seen. Let's see a contribution bounty, after which some of the companies supporting the hardware cough up their precsioussss, precioussss "intellectual property".