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GNU-Darwin: Three Years of Free Software Activism
JigSaw writes "The GNU-Darwin Distribution is a free BSD operating system and a popular source of free software for Mac OS X and Darwin-x86 users, but it is also a platform for digital activism. Founder Michael L. Love wrote an editorial speaking about the roots, goals, problems and just about everything about GNU-Darwin. Free Software is at the core of GNU-Darwin and also anything political that has an impact on digital and even rights. Is this the first truly politically oriented BSD OS?" Nope.
Problem is that for most people, digital activism amounts to bitching and whining on /. and maybe voting for people who have no chance of winning.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Well, timothy seems to be suggesting that OpenBSD is a 'truly politically oriented' version of BSD. Yet the OpenBSD site says that one of their goals is to "[b]e as politics-free as possible; solutions should be decided on the basis of technical merit." So is it just not possible for a group of Free Software programmers to be non-political?
Maybe partying will help...
GNU-Darwin is an activist distribution
...
GNU-Darwin has been an ardent defender of digital liberties, and it is a platform for digital activism. Given the current state of things in the US and elsewhere, strident expressions of democratic power are necessary.
blah-blah
We have been prepared to take the Distro off-line a couple of times as a form of political action.
Damn, my skin crawls just remembering it
Seriously, what's this political rah-rah attached to software making? sure free software is about freedom of speech and it's very preferrable for a million valid reasons, but gee, let go of the melodrama-mode button.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
Seems silly such an article is written about "3 years" of free software. Since clearly this "free" stuff has been around for quite a bit longer.
I see Darwin as FreeBSD's little brother that just happens to have picked up a nice job working for a respectable corporation. The only reason why anyone really cares about this distro is because Apple does. Not that that is a bad thing.
That GNU-Darwin people decides not to link to "proprietary" libraries is, of course, a result of them using the GNU Public License so extensively-- and now the primary supported Darwin platform is not even supported in this project!
This makes me shake my head and think, "what the fuck?" This project is not only shooting itself in the foot by choosing a platform not fully supported by the OS, but is also screwing over the real meat of Darwin's userbase: PowerPC owners. This move is akin to opening a car garage (in America) whose mechanics are all experienced in servicing American cars, and then changing policy months later, stating that the garage will only work on foreign models.
Where's the fucking logic?
Seriously, am I the only one who is wondering who the Hell is in charge at that project? Kool-Aid Man? This move makes so little sense I can't tell if the people at GNU-Darwin are really that stupid, or if I am waking up in alternate realities every damn morning. I almost kind of hope for the latter.
This is the GPL in action, Mac faithful. Get down and kiss Apple's butt for choosing the BSD license.
While I seriously doubt a free os will be able to muster the clout to be taken seriously on theri Antiwar stand or for that matter their Anti DMCA stand. Its very good to see people taking a stand and getting out the message.
This does point out the bigger question of why the technical community is not taken seriously on political issues. If you caught the Diane Rehm show this morning, they were doing a piece on voting systems. While they did have a few C.S. people talking about the problems of electronic voting machines, the election officials managed to stonewall and treat their concerns as non issues. The trick for technical people of any stripe is to make certain that the opinion of their community is heared outside their community. GNU/darwin, free BSD, or linux will only serve as a platform for speaking to those allready within a particular community.
From the site:
In fact, we did blackout the home page as a war protest in March, and we blackened the whole website, after Apple used the DMCA, but we have never actually taken it off line. Fortunately, the situation has never warranted taking the package collection off line, which would be an even more drastic step, and our actual users have never been affected by these actions. In fact, we received many orders and messages of support as a result of our activism.
While I realize that MOST of the supporters of Darwin may in fact be politically liberal...this is not fair for the [conservative and otherwise] users that are not. I'm not looking to start a flame war, but I believe that inserting his political beliefs into his work project is less than elegant.
Dubya: Ok, tomorrow we start dropping the bombs if the demands are not met.
General: Sir! We just got the news in! The GNU-Darwin distribution has taken down its website!
Dubya: Oh my god! Cancel the war!!
The whole article just comes off like a crank piece to me. I'm against the war in Iraq, but if they think blacking out their web site is a real form of anti-war protest, that's pretty pathetic.
Find free books.
Well, I'm not very familiar with Darwin, but now I can say, based on this story, that my mind is pretty closed to it. I would certainly be hard pressed to ever consider it for anything in a production environment.
I don't want politics with my OS. I don't want the distribution site going black because Bush decides to bomb koala bears or even humans for that matter. Call me cold-hearted, but if I'm in a production environment, and I need to deliver a box that's expected to be supported and work as advertised, I don't want to worry if the freaking OS "activists" -- whatever the hell they are, exactly -- are going to pull the Distro (capitalized, no less) because the Malaguan butterfly's habitat is endangered by oil drilling or 250 million U.S. citizens have strong opinions about war.
Screw that. Give me my FreeBSD, which, to my knowledge, is pretty much always available, regardless of what Dan Rather is spewing at any given moment, and give me peace of mind. Hey, I know that's a lot less eloquent than "give me freedom, or give me death", but in my mind, and with some of the pressures I face from clients, I really don't distinguish between the two.
Activists need to shut up and get jobs anyway.
Chr0m0Dr0m!C
Quick...name one Fortune 1000 company seriously considering a move to Hurd.
Ultimately, it's not Stallmans call over what kernel is used. That's sorta the thing with the GPL. Since it's all GPLed, people can pick what kernel they like. Some folks will jump to Hurd. My own guess is that very few will abandon Linux, at least in the forseeable future.
FWIW...People who want to dispose of the Linux kernel now do have an option. Last time I checked, the Debian/NetBSD folks had something going, tho they has some "interesting" ideas about licenses. I haven't seen a mad rush that direction from either the Debian or the NetBSD camp.
That said...we could use a new toolchain on top of Linux. Not because of any "consipricy" on the part of Stallman and his cabal, but because the GNU compilers are vastly better at portability that optimization. Having something as good as the Intel compiler or the DEC Alpha compiler for ever arch would be nice...
We need a non-GNU toolchain to put on top of the Linux kernel so that when the Hurd makes its power play, Linux won't be dependent on the GNU stuff.
Why do you think that the advent of the Hurd would be a bad thing from which other systems need protection? Your entire post is an odd rant, for why rail against GNU software if you're a Linux user?I'm disappointed by the lack of progress in the Hurd (it should pick up after the port to the L4 microkernel, however), but if it achieved stability it would be a superior solution to anything currently on the market. The Hurd has a ton of ingenious improvements and renovations in POSIX architecture, and could truly be a better future for *nix users. Of course, I'm not getting my hopes up, it's been ten years and Debian Hurd is hardly usable. But a man can dream.
Anyway, I expect GNU-Darwin to be cannabalised for code after Hurd picks up. This isn't a bad thing, however, since code reusability is a good thing.
This guy's a zealot. I don't mind him choosing to do what he does, but I won't ever bother to try out GNU/Darwin because of his zealotry. I prefer a more relaxed environment where BSD, GNU, APSL, or other licenses are not so strongly advocated or political/religious views put forward that I can worry instead about what interests me.
Make sure you vote in the next election. And think before you do.
What for? aren't Diebold machines supposed to do that for you?
This nutjob seems to think that people should be buying into his beliefs when all anybody cares about is the software. He makes the mistake of thinking people should care just like him one other issues because of one non-related issue.
Can you imagine if you were in a restaurant and the waiter berates you for being pro/anti-abortion, pro/anti gun or being christian/jewish/whatever??
I'm sorry, this guy is really no much different than the child molesters who tempt kids with candy , only to get them into the back of their vans. Harsh, but true.
SIG:Slashdot: indymedia for nerds.
"In fact, we did blackout the home page as a war protest in March, and we blackened the whole website, after Apple used the DMCA, but we have never actually taken it off line"
/ ne ws/2003/06/22/wzim122.xml
Did they take the site offline when "The war veterans - unleashed by President Robert Mugabe to seize white-owned farms - are not, however, killing only people: they are slaughtering animals on an unprecedented scale."?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=
Did they take the site offline to protest the jailing and torture in china of people who speak out or worship?
Did they take the site offline to protest the actions of the goverment of iran to put down the student lead protest movement that has resulted in thousands being thrown in jail?
No? Why not? Do they only protest against things that are 'in style' and/or 'hip' with their 'progressive' friends?
So called 'GNU-Darwin' is NOT OpenDarwin so far as I can tell from their respective websites. Apple is not associated with GNU-Darwin in any way, other than GNU-Darwin seems to have stolen the mascot, the name (adding GNU - how original and trademark avoiding), and the source.
Seems to me that this 'GNU-Darwin' is no more than a political website, probably distributing the stock Darwin unchanged.
Stupid, stupid people. This can of worms has been opened before - don't they know that polotics is not considered 'added-value'? And if they don't have anything substantial to add to the core Darwin, they won't last more than it takes for them to come up with some other bandwagon.
-Adam
For example, on the GNU-Darwin site, the developer mentions taking the distro offline as a protest to the war. What purpose did this really server? Do you really think that the leaders of the coalition had any high-level meetings where they said "You know, I really thought this war was a good idea. But the blackout on the GNU-Darwin software site has really made me think twice"? Of course not. What it DID do however was pressure some of the distro's users to get pissed off and write their MP or Congressman and oppose the war because they wanted their distro back damnit! And that was the intention: to force their USERS into taking a specific action.
Yep, there's that freedom they rant about huh? Software blackouts don't mean a thing and the developers/sites that use them should be ashamed of themselves for trying to extort their users in such a way.
Anthony Papillion
Advanced Data Concepts, Inc.
"Quality Custom Software and IT Services"
We have been prepared to take the Distro off-line a couple of times as a form of political action. It is important to realize that the software freedom status of GNU-Darwin was tenuous before the change to the APSL, so we were ready to cut our losses, and remove GNU-Darwin from the internet, if necessary. Now things have improved very much.
Which pretty much sums up why these guys will never be any kind of serious competition for any real free OS. Who the hell would place any faith in this distribution? Doesn't exactly sound like the kind of dependable OS I'd want to put on my critical servers if it's going to come and go depending on the current political situation. And what kind of idiotic form of activism is it that goes out of its way to inconvenience its supporters, rather than the people its protesting against?
Apple didn't change the APSL because of you. Hell, Apple can't possibly think much of your project, considering they've since founded OpenDarwin, and are paying people to create DarwinPorts.
It's kind of sad you need to write these articles yourself. I mean, if people actually liked your distribution, they'd be writing these crappy articles for you! You don't see Linus submitting stories to Slashdot about Linux, do you?
Darwin already has a mature, GPL-licensed, Stallman-compatible software distribution: Fink. Hell, it' even uses apt, the favourite software management tool of people everywhere. There's also the aforementioned DarwinPorts project, for people that wish to use modern, ports-like system on Darwin.
Maybe GNU-Darwin should be focusing on important things: It's not part of MetaPKG, the massive collaborative Darwin software effort, which Fink and DarwinPorts primary members. Even the newcomer Gentoo has been invited to take part. But GNU-Darwin has not.
The future of Darwin software is setting sail, yet GNU-Darwin isn't on the boat. This can't possibly bode well for GNU-Darwin's future relevance on the platform. Maybe they should be working to become a part of that, instead of submitting rubbish to Kuro5hin, Slashdot and OSNews.
Right now, GNU-Darwin is totally irrelevant, and there's nothing on the horizon to change that. If it disappeared tomorrow, no-one would notice. Instead of trolling here at Slashdot, go do something!