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You appear to be making silly excuses for distro's purist state, and ignoring the fact that the non-free technologies listed above are rather deeply entrenched in the computing habits of normal consumers.

You can't expect people to go around manually installing a repository for flash support

People do use netflix, infact it's quite popular, the fact that you personally do not, does not cause the issue to go away

I'm just guessing here, but the "overdrive ebooks from the local library" he mentioned probably come with DRM that requires adobe's reader and will scupper attempts to read them in open source pdf viewers that might ship with the distro

It was a silly and counterproductive move by a bunch of hardline freesofters, what is needed is the more moderate approach involving liveCDs of userfriendly distros, and disks or usb sticks containing Windows FOSS collections like the opencd, much like teams at Software Freedom Day events use.

http://wiki.softwarefreedomday.org/CategoryTeam2011

Top Four by country:
India 53
USA 37
Philippines 28
Mexico 27

Looks like Open Source is quite active in the Philippines and Mexico.

Team Antarctica!

Seriously, do we really want to give the Reptilians living inside the "Hollow Earth" accessible by a giant hole in Antarctica more reasons to attack?

Seems to me this is a lot like the software security situation. Virus makers make a virus. It gets fingerprinted and blocked. The virus maker evolves the virus around the AV software and the game continues indefinitely.

Since the legal code is really just like software for running courts, the same sort of evolution will continue indefinitely between free software and proprietary software vendors. What happens in this situation is the lawyers will profit greatly.

The most effective tool in this battle is publicity. Get the word out about free software and why people should care that the software they run is free. An event is coming up for this purpose...software freedom day. Why not participate? Join or start a team at http://softwarefreedomday.org/

If you look at the number of teams to population size for Software Freedom Day (which often involves people handing out CDs with Firefox and other free software) you'll see some correlation to these usage stats.

For example, compare the USA (24 teams) with Australia (19 teams). When you consider that the US population is over ten times bigger than Australia's population (298,444,215 vs 20,264,082), is it any wonder that Software Freedom Day is more effective in "Oceania" than it is in the US?

Not to mention the cultural differences in accepting software from random people on the street in the US, Europe and Australia.

If you look at the number of teams to population size for Software Freedom Day (which often involves people handing out CDs with Firefox and other free software) you'll see some correlation to these usage stats.

For example, compare the USA (24 teams) with Australia (19 teams). When you consider that the US population is over ten times bigger than Australia's population (298,444,215 vs 20,264,082), is it any wonder that Software Freedom Day is more effective in "Oceania" than it is in the US?

Not to mention the cultural differences in accepting software from random people on the street in the US, Europe and Australia.

If that sounds like you, don't forget to join a local team for Software Freedom Day '06.

This is one of those issues which pokes pretty close to home. Its also an issue which is best understood by people with some technical background who can unpack the difference between content and the DRM or TPM around it. This means its not easy for non tech consumer groups to defend people's rights on these issues without support and explanations from their local geeky community.

There are plenty of different things we can do - from an email only approach to face to face talking to people.
Tell people and politicians about the kinds of access rights that make invention, creativity, research, humour,
exploration, tinkering, critique, reverse engineering, remixing, adapting and restoring possible.

Get into promoting digital access rights like these:
http://www.adelphicharter.org/

Check out the Access to Knowledge Treaty developed by creators and users:
http://www.cptech.org/a2k/ (link on left Draft Treaty)

Don't be afraid to lobby at the UN level. These things are being promoted through international trade organisations so do check out
what is happening at WIPO and other international forums.
http://www.intgovforum.org/contributions_for_1st_I GF.htm

And Software Freedom Day is on 16 September
http://softwarefreedomday.org/

While it might happen in Cambridge at any time, on September 10th it was supposed to happen in many other cities too -- it was Software Freedom Day.

This was a premeditated event, perpetrated by Mako (as previously linked in this thread) and the BLU crew. Sorry I couldn't be there, maybe next year. (I would suspect there may be some Ubuntu CDs at the Ocbober BLU meeting too, since Mako is speaking on Ubuntu.)

--Bill

This is the problem with free software, you can't give the stuff away, people align pricetag with quality, especially the non technical end users i know. They all need windows XP professional, not home mind, that's not good enough, they all need the latest and greatest M$ office professional release, and wont be happy unless the DVD playback software is pirated, even if the graphics card in the machine came with a CD containing a more up to date version of the same f***ing software!!?!?!?

of course, microsoft have no problem with people pirating their software if it maintains this thought process in the minds of consumers.

it's possible that this is largely a UK thing, for one, Software freedom day seemed to be far better recieved in other countries.

It might be good to sponsor some teams for Software Freedom Day this year to help spread general awareness of Linux and FOSS in general.

Someone should set up an alternative contest to make a film about why sharing ideas is a good thing. Even if this turns out to be a hoax, this positive competition would be cool anyway.

£2000 is not that much, we can match that :) If someone is willing to do the org work, I'd be happy to put up the £2000 (donations might increase that sum and/or reduce my share). The project would need a good website and would need to have the same deadline as the MSFT competition (July 1st). Ideally the effort should tie in with the Creative Commons group UK and possibly Software Freedom Day.

OK, I've opened my big mouth now. Anyone else?

Amazing! This is almost exactly the opposite of Software Freedom Day!

Argh. This is a dupe (though not Timothy's fault). The BBC picked up on and added to the original article by David Lugard, that Slashdot previously linked to here. The IOSN guys contacted them, requested a correction and in the process supplied BBC with additional information about what was done. However, the article, like all those based on the original IDG/Infoworld article, is misleading. The IOSN was merely publicizing the event and if you clicked through the link, you would see that. (Assuming it's not /.'ed. It was down the whole of last week due to two consecutive postings onto Slashdot.)

Software Freedom Day's true website is at www.softwarefreedomday.org and credit should go to the great guys there who did so much to organize and publicize it, including the OpenCD people (Henrik) and others.

We had a nice time promoting the localized GNU/Linux (site not upto date with the work) on the Free Software Day. The response was phenominal, and we can see more and more people and commercial organizations are coming forward to help us take the message across.

And we make it clear that FOSS is better not because of the cost, but because of the flexibility, freedom and control that comes with it, and the mindset change from dependence to independence.

Here is their official website since the article
fails to mention it anywhere

Hey, please!

The link text is typed correctly, but the link itself is wrong.

Try this:

• http://www.softwarefreedomday.org

The story is wrong, wrong, wrong and needs corrections.

I know the founder of Software Freedom Day, it is not the IOSN, they are simply supporting and organizing several teams. The correct site for Software Freedom Day is here:
www.softwarefreedomday.org

Also, please provide a source for the speculation that Microsoft withdrew because of this or retract the article. I think it is simply unhealthy speculation.

I agree. I think this is an extremely spurious connection. Perhaps Slashdot could adjust the story please? And you might want to link to the actual site.

Hm. Perhaps I should link properly.

Yes, the article has it wrong. It's taking place in over 30 counties. See the list here.

Agree. People should take to the streets this Saturday, on Software Freedom Day and make some noise about this. Burn some CDs, print some flyers and inform the voting public ...

Rumor is that Thunderbird and Firefox are hidden away somewhere on the soon to be released version of TheOpenCD. This special edition (1.4.1) will be handed out to an unsuspecting public at 17 different locations around the world (and counting) on Software Freedom Day, August 28th along with a custom version of Knoppix. About 10.000 copies are being produced. The new edition might even be out by Tuesday ...

Through incredible luck (as opposed to planning) the last weekend of aKademy coincides with the first annual Software Freedom Day on August 28th, so the KDE people are throwing a big party! Anyone know if they plan to hand out Knoppix discs in the Stuttgart area as well?

why on earth did your household wait so long?

Obligatory link to SFD activities at "Get The Facts"

How was the Linux community showing in Edinburgh? Would you consider writing up a brief report on the event? (Like this one)

FSM gave away 1000 CDs of Knoppix and TheOpenCD at a similar event in Skopje, Mecedonia last week.

People in Skopje, Macedonia were first, giving away 1000 CDs last week!

That's excactly what we did, but with TheOpenCD. Look here. I've got lots more copies of TheOpenCD for anyone who wants to go to the three other events.

Here is more coverage of the event with pictures.

i've always wondered why peopel insist on using free for non commercial use but proprietry web apps, for instance, why use Invision when phpBB2 is available and you know exactly where you stand with it?

the people obviously want Free software, but struggle to understand the important differences in usage of such a word.

maybe Software Freedom Day can help educate them.

You should read this exchange between Daniel Ho of Ignalum and Henrick Omma of the OpenCD. Funny stuff, and it gives some insight into how these Ignalum guys approach the OSS community.

so, you want to do what, make a distro totally dedicated to Gaming? a full installable distro, or just another Morphix Games LiveCD, if the former i really see little point, while Games are lovely to have around, and most linux distros give you a good handful of nice games(Frozen Bubble is apparantly very popular among new converts) but also allow you to do plenty of useful tasks on the same operating system, with this idea of run the risk of relegating Linux to simply booting up and playing games.

of course, if you're looking to improve upon Morphix Games, that's great, making the overall user experience a little more pleasant, and ensuring that games are really good enough for the general public, that's a great idea, it's the kind of thing you can give away in addition to Gnoppix, TheOpenCD, or whatever else. infact, it might be something worth putting in the handout pack for SoftwareFreedomDay