Slashdot Mirror

Slashdot seems to me to be a proponent of the open source movement, the software development methodology that Bradley Kuhn rightly called "greenwashing" (another copy) the free software movement by talking about much the same software and licenses but without the freedom talk in order to placate business interests seeking to proprietarize software. Consider the case in this thread—defending copyleft—this clearly shows the difference between the two movements. The older free software movement wants to preserve software freedom while the younger open source movement was built to not discuss software freedom at all. Kuhn's personal blog post on this topic describes the situation very well and with no punches pulled.

When you come across someone who talks and works to defend software freedom, such as Richard Stallman, in a forum whose participants are (be they a proprietor's shill or genuinely describing their own view) devoted to supporting the kind of power over the user that strongly copylefted licenses, such as the GNU GPLs, were built to withstand you're going to find people using whatever namecalling and misrepresentative tactics they can come up with to try and malign Stallman (as if that would somehow reflect badly on software freedom). The complaints get weaker over time (remember when people used to complain that the GPL wasn't defensible in court?) so the objectors have to find other avenues to try and distract people into not thinking in terms of software freedom. It wouldn't matter if software freedom were proposed and initially championed by someone wholly objectionable; that wouldn't make software freedom a bad thing. Talking about Stallman instead of talking about software freedom is doing that distractionary work because the facts on the ground fail to back the case that we're better off without software freedom.

Quite right about how Digital "Rights" Management is a propaganda term designed to frame the issue as though it's okay to take user/reader rights away from them in the switch from one means of seeing media to another. But Mozilla has always framed its work as "open source". So one should expect with "open"ness -- the open source movement is, as Brad Kuhn pointed out recently, the greenwashing movement it was defined to be. The Free Software Foundation has long pointed out how "open source" differs from "free software" (older essay, younger essay). The younger open source movement accepts proprietary software and the older free software movement does not because open source was defined as a proprietor-friendly response to the user freedom-seeking social movement.

See Brad Kuhn's talk about the future of copyleft (mirror) for the cure to non-copylefted free software—to keep software freedom in derivative works, license with strongly copylefted free software licenses (the AGPL version 3 or later being the best choice now) and then enforce the license.

Quite right, in fact most of what gets posted to /. including this story could be responded to with a phrase Eben Moglen has been saying for years in his talks: "RMS was right". Richard Stallman had it right years ago and, equally importantly, for the right reasons. Not "Open Source" (the younger movement Brad Kuhn rightly points out is built to greenwash proprietary-supporting non-copylefted Free Software (copy 1, copy 2) but strongly copylefted Free Software released and developed for freedom.

The Affero GPL version 3 or later will keep software Free as in freedom and meet the needs of the future. Users will undoubtedly want to know how things work and benefit from software written by programmers allowed to understand how things work. This will help us avoid the very trap the grandparent post referred to (and you wisely advised against).

I should have figured that you'd be in New Zealand or somewhere equally lacking in decent internet access (South Africa, North Korea, Turkmenistan, Saudi Arabia...)

You neglect to mention which ISP you are with, but perhaps you might be best to upgrade your plan a step or two:

Telecom (Xtra) has "Go" at NZ$39.95/mo with a 3GB cap, or "Explorer" at NZ$49.95/mo with a 10GB cap.
https://www.telecom.co.nz/broadband/select/1,10627,205728-204466,00.html

TelstraClear has their PDQ Launch 256kbps/Turbo 2+mbit options at NZ$24/mo or NZ$36/mo plus the NZ$2.95/1GB or $11.95/10GB/mo for usage (based on the 1GB cap, can I assume you have PDQ launch+1GB?) http://www.telstraclear.co.nz/residential/homeplan/internet/pdq-broadband/speed-and-usage-plans.cfm

I'm sure ihug, orcon and slingshot all have their plans too - perhaps it is time for a change. ...myself, I could never move back to NZ from my 100mbit/unlimited (or 110mbit with some isps)broadbandy goodness. My bills would sting too much.

Here's a couple os shots from the 3.2 beta. Drool.

http://homepages.slingshot.co.nz/~irfan/snapshot 1. jpg Easy Clicking

http://homepages.slingshot.co.nz/~irfan/snapshot 2. jpg Easy Clicking

Here's a couple os shots from the 3.2 beta. Drool.

http://homepages.slingshot.co.nz/~irfan/snapshot 1. jpg Easy Clicking

http://homepages.slingshot.co.nz/~irfan/snapshot 2. jpg Easy Clicking

America is going to kill thousands of innocent people soon and you are worried about a couple of people getting killed in an accident?

Shows YOUR priorities

hansel dunlop