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Miscellaneous GNU News

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the hat-trick dept.

A new monthly column Brave GNU World has started, with the mission to inform everybody about new GNU software. Apparently dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda does not completely delete the contents of you hard-drive. You should use shred instead. Paul Smith wrote in to plug a Free lecture by Richard Stallman which is going to be held tomorrow - Tuesday 23 March at 7pm at the Commonwealth Institute in London. Finally, jbc wrote in with "In his latest 'Ask Tim' piece, Tim O'Reilly talks about the differences between himself and RMS in terms of how they view OSS/FSF licensing issues." null -> zero (*blush*)

1 of 206 comments (clear)

  1. Marketplace by Ian+Bicking · · Score: 5
    To quote from the O'Reilly piece:
    The free movement of ideas always trumps restrictions on ideas in terms of innovation and quality. So let Open Source be tested in the marketplace, not in the pulpit!
    Why do people so obsess over the marketplace? It's as though they feel it embodies everything -- reality, morality, existance. It serves to disempower people. When someone believes that something is right not because it is profitable, but because it is right, they are dismissed by the idea of the marketplace. When a people try to decide what they want from their society and economy (often through the government) they are said to hinder the marketplace, as though it has some higher moral standing.

    The marketplace has given us no ideas, no beauty, no creation. People have given us those things -- often in disregard of the marketplace which can offer only material rewards.

    So, to hell with the marketplace. Even in the most utopian of marketplace ideals, it is dull and dead. Thankfully not everyone has given up on thought and, yes, morallity for the seductive void of the marketplace.

    I know I certainly am not tired of moralizing :)