It'd be easier for them to just upgrade.NET to be incompatible with everything they promised not to sue over. Then they can sue when people upgrade, because there's no promise covering the new versions.
Steps:
Microsoft purchases patent license for H.264 (or whatever) in their products.
Microsoft makes H.264/whatever mandatory in C# version+1.
Mono can't get a patent license for H.264 and still be Free Software, so it won't be covered by patent promise if it tries to implement C# version+1.
It is? Really? I see this leading to "Don't publish stories on X person who has been kidnapped because they might kill him" to "Don't publish this unverified and unlikely dirty bomb threat to Y city because you'll cause mass panic and death."
At some point people have to made judgment calls. At what level do we call a bomb threat "unlikely" ? It's easy to determine when a bomb threat is real (like, say, when we find a bomb or it goes off), but essentially impossible to determine the converse.
The slippery slope seems to bottom out at the "Temporarily supressing stories when there is a clear and credible threat to human life."
Ummm. And that couldn't be manipulated by a government or large group how?
Which is one I'm okay with as long as you keep that big fat line of "clear and credible threat to human life." Give wikipedians and the founders of wiki a little credit, they're not going to accept things like "Don't publish that this politician lied because there is a threat to human life," or "Don't publish this about scientology because someone could die over it."
I'm not saying that what Wikipedia did was unjustified, I'm just concerned about the slippery slope. Do you have any doubts that there are journalists in the US right now who have been told not to reveal details of our federal government or actions of their agents due to "potential loss of human life" ? Sure. And some of that may be justified, but considering that there are Secret Courts that administer Secret Laws that mere ordinary citizens such as you and I are not even allowed to read, I understand the reluctance of others to simply accept the fact that Wikipedia, an encyclopedia by the people and for the people, might censor some information.
I mean, if Wikipedia is going to consider censoring information such as this, then they should put it up for a vote to the community. Obviously they'd have to vote on some basic rules ahead of time, but honestly if it's "the open encyclopedia that anyone can edit," the community should vote on its rules of governance. That way the power comes from the people, instead of the elite holding all of the power and granting a tiny subset of it to the community.
Investigators do not believe Campbell had any contact with the three girls, but "when you have the face of a small child affixed to a nude body of a mature woman, it's going to be the state's position that this is for sexual gratification and that this is simulated sexual activity," Assistant District Attorney Dave Denny said
"It's definitely on the increase," said Justin Fitzsimmons, a former prosecutor and senior attorney with the National Center for the Prosecution of Child Abuse, part of the National District Attorneys' Association. "People are trying to come up with creative ways to continue to sexually exploit children using digital evidence."
Great story, but I'm confused about what he did and what he's being charged with. Has the DA described the victim and explained how they're negatively affected in this case? Was this man trying to distribute the mashed-up pictures? Was this man found with the pictures on a personal computer? What happened here?
The whole reason we have laws prohibiting sex with children or erotic photography of children is that we believe that they are immature and are unable to make clear, well-thought-out, rational decisions about their actions. Well, that and the fact that we're a country descended from Puritans and a bunch of churchgoing folk. When considering similar cases in the past, SCOTUS took the eminently reasonable stance that depictions of child pornography that did not involve actual children were legal. This case is very interesting, as it does involve photos of underage children, but as long as the man did not try to distribute the pictures and took reasonable steps to do so, then what persons were harmed?
This case is also very interesting as it seems to hinge on taking two completely legal, distributable components -- a picture of a child and a picture of pornography -- and making something illegal by blending the two. This distinction has an important legal distinction with physical objects all the time, as it is illegal to distribute large quantities of explosives such as ANFO, but legal to distribute fuel oil and fertilizer unblended and separate. With pictures and print, aside from possible slander/libel charges due to misrepresentation, I can't think of any situation in which the mashup of two legally distributable documents would be found to be illegal.
It will be very interesting to see how the court deals with this case.
The lead developer for FlashGot needs to contact the SFLC. Right. Now. The SFLC has lawyers on staff who eat companies like this for breakfast. Or at least, you know, they'll give them a very stern talking-to.
He shouldn't contact the supposed violators (that could cause legal murkiness), he should not go fishing around for evidence of the violation (again, more lawyerly problems), he should not pass Go, and in no way shape or form should he try to collect $200 from anyone.
Once he talks to the lawyers then he'll know what steps he should take to document the violation and then to approach the violators. By putting his ducks in a row first and by communicating with a lawyer, he'll have a much easier time approaching the Sothink company and getting the violation resolved.
Pro tip: The last time I emailed the SFLC it took 13 days for them to respond, so in order to get the ball rolling on resolving this problem I'd suggest picking up the phone and calling them.
Were I a Debian leader, I would simply approach Microsoft with the Mono code and the ECMA code of conduct [ecma-international.org] and demand it in writing that for this snapshot of the code you have a forever royalty free to interact with.NET.
What if someone wants to fix a bug in Mono or update it? Licenses that only cover snapshots of code or certain signed binaries are probably more of a headache than having no license at all. At least in the latter case you're less likely to have users be deluded into thinking that they're legally covered.
Peer-to-peer reviews of individual diffs using good workflow tools have been very effective at several places I have worked and in open-source projects to which I have committed.
This is basically how we work at my lab. Anything going into the master branch of our multimedia engine needs peer review; anything going into a multimedia project needs peer review after we've hit beta (roughly speaking).
In my experience code review is a very helpful part of development. It often catches stupid errors and can be an important piece of keeping the programming team abreast of everything that's going into the codebase.
If you don't like unit tests (or at least the idea of writing unit tests -- I often fail at writing them before I write my code), then you might consider peer review of code a big hassle. Personally, I think the benefits are well worth the cost.
Yes, but talk like that will just make you popular with the lesbians.
Which is perfectly alright. But if you're straight it's a lonely existence.
I dunno... I mean, sure, lesbians often have friends that are gay as well. But in my experience they tend to have female friends that are straight or bi, so I find that it generally works out okay.
I could engage in some huge diatribe about how you're objectifying women and you shouldn't be a douche online 'cause that makes the geek girls uncomfortable.
@RegularFry, thanks for the other email address -- Palm just got back to me:
From: Opensourcequestions To: Qubit Subject: RE: FOSS used in the Pre?
Hello [Qubit],
Many thanks for the email.
We are in the process of preparing the packages and our modifications to upload them to our open source web site - http://opensource.palm.com./
The specific page where the packages will be posted is: http://opensource.palm.com/packages.html. For now, the page says "Coming soon" but we expect to have the packages ready and uploaded in about 2 weeks.
All the best, Palm Open Source Team
It sounds like they're acting in good faith here. One could theoretically be a stickler and say that they aren't providing the sources now, but considering how long it could take to send them snail-mail and then get back a printout or CD of code via media mail, I think that 2 weeks isn't half bad.
If they haven't posted anything on the site in 2 weeks I'll post something on my blog and then try emailing them back again.
Offered by HorseyGirl - Pet Sitting - 10 stars/hr
If you live near Parker Rd, I'd be happy to take care of your animal while your on vacation. For 10 stars a day, I'll feed your animal twice, play with it, and if it's sick I'll call you. Call my parents at 919-969-8609, and ask if Caitlin can take care of your pet.
HorseyGirl wants to take care of my pet? Ummmm... is that a legit post or are you just seeing an influx of people who got kicked off of Craigslist for offering erotic services?
The GPL says that source can be provided on demand. I wonder if anyone's asked them?
From: Qubit To: pdn@palm.com Subject: FOSS used in the Pre?
Hi,
I've read a lot about the Palm Pre in the media and it sure looks like a slick device. I currently have a Treo650, and while it's actually humming along pretty well I think could be convinced to upgrade to the Pre. I probably wouldn't switch for a few months, as I would have to go though a little hassle of changing carriers, but the advanced features of the Pre would certainly make my life a lot easier!
From what I read on Wikipedia and in the first chapter of the O'Reilly webOS book, the Pre runs on an embedded Linux platform and leverages a number of FOSS programs like WebKit. I'm really interested to hear what changes you've made to WebKit and the Linux kernel for the Pre and if you use any other FOSS software on the system. Does Palm have a website where I could read about these changes and download source files?
Thanks, -- Qubit
If this doesn't garner any replies (I might try a few different email addresses @ palm), I'll write a snailmail letter to Palm directly.
As I am not yet in possession of a copy of their webOS it's true that they could politely turn down my request, but I hope that they'll just post a copy of their modifications up on their website somewhere. It's not like it's an onerous task to throw up a read-only repo. Heck, I'm sure that GitHub or Gitorious would be more than happy to host the FOSS code changes that Palm made.
I assume the root image indicates modifications to GPL source, like Webkit. Have they published the changes?
WebKit is not GPLed. Their main page states that they are an open source project (their words) with portions available under BSD and LGPL licenses.
Palm doesn't have to release anything if they use BSD code in their software stack. If they use LGPL code then I believe that they have to release their changes and provide a method allowing the end user to replace the LGPLed library with a different library. I'm no lawyer, so I'd suggest that you look at the license for the details.
Cracking open the ROM is nifty and all (although it might cause issues for you later if you want to develop on the platform), but what I still want to know is where are the Palm Pre Linux kernel sources?.
I've looked all over the Palm sites and even Googledfor it, but I haven't come up with anything but speculation. I can't believe that they're using a prebuilt kernel from TI, so what gives?
that's why ambulances are fitted with blue lights and sirens.
Maybe in the UK, but in the US I believe that flashing blue lights are strictly reserved for law enforcement.
Is there another color reserved for law enforcement in the UK, or is it just kind of a pick-your-own-color free for all amongst the emergency services?:-)
I'm not saying it's going to be easy, but if you start with the FreeGeek mission statement:
[The FreeGeek mission is] to recycle technology and provide access to computers, the internet, education and job skills in exchange for community service.
And you tweak that a little bit and get:
The California Universal Technology Enablers (CUTE) will recycle technology and provide access to computers and the internet for students in exchange for community service
Any student would have the ability (maybe it will be a part of their computers & technology homework?) to spend time in a FreeGeek-ish community center helping to recycle technology and build computers for reuse. Students who do not have a computer at home would be able to receive a computer through this service. Students under a certain age would not work directly with the recycling aspects due to safety concerns, but they could help out with other tasks.
I'm not exactly sure how the Internet access problem would be solved, but in high-density enough areas some kind of ad-hoc mesh networking might be possible (although AFAIK community mesh networks tech isn't quite ready yet).
The problem is that in order to make this plan work you'd need a lot of time and energy from the community. And you'd need it to happy in not just one town, but in each town or part of a big city all across California. People would need to step up bigtime to make something like that happen, and with the current finances of the state government these community organizations could have trouble getting off the ground without initial injections of cash.
They added a feature to donate money to open source projects. Or even allowed projects to sell their own open-source software in the store. Or sell for cost add-ons to the open source software. Yes, open source software could very well be downloaded elsewhere for free, but people might well pay for the convenience of getting it one place.
But who does (or should) the money go to?
The guy who packaged My-Shiny-FOSS-App for the Novell store?
The guy who put the new GUI front-end on the program?
The guy who's been maintaining the library underneath it all?
The guys who wrote the original version of the library when they were hopped up on RedBull one night in College and then subsequently forgot about it and lost their sf.net password so they abandoned the project?
Cowboy Neal?
Sometimes funding FOSS development is relatively easy -- you've got one program that you use all the time, it's written by a single guy (or group of guys), and they've all agreed to have money go to a single organization that has nonprofit status, making it easy to just cut them a check.
For all the rest of the projects, funding development is not so easy.
Lots of projects say things like "Yeah... take a look at the commit logs and decide who you want to fund. Most developers have an Amazon wishlist or a hardware wishlist." While I understand their situation, it would be a lot easier for me if I could just send money to some organization or person. Otherwise I agonize over who to send what to. That's the simple truth.
Speaking of funding FOSS projects, I'm going to put in a shameless plug for my article Free Software starts in your pocket. I'm kind of "beta testing" it right now, and while it doesn't solve the problem of how to give to FOSS projects that I mentioned above, it does solve the problem of remembering to donate money regularly.
the status for the support of full Flash (with all actionscripts)
Gnash is getting extremely close to being a drop-in Free Software replacement for the Adobe Flash Player. In the linked videos, the ARM director of mobile computing was talking about how the ARM folks were working with Adobe to get Adobe Flash running on the ARM processors, but Gnash has already had ARM support for years. If they're demoing Ubuntu -- a Free Software OS -- on these machines, then why not use a Free Software program to play Flash programs on them? Why not invest their time and energy in the Free Software project?
Jason Guiditta wrote: > Just saw this...article...bsquared porting flash lite to run on an upcoming dell > netbook.
Yes, I'm familiar with Bsquared. They're porting the Adobe v10 to embedded platforms, basically getting rid of Flash Lite, which has always been somewhat limited. I've talked to several company's also talking to Bsquared.
>...This seems like a perfect opportunity to get some > funding for gnash, since it is already designed to run on so many > platforms. If a big company like Dell is willing to pay to get flash > well-supported on their netbook, why could that player not be gnash?
We'd need a contact at a sufficiently high level. Of the companies I know using BSquared's promised flashplayer for ARM, MIPS, etc... have decided they'd rather spend hundreds of thousands of $$$ for the Bsquared solution, than give much smaller amounts to Gnash, which already runs on the ARM and Android. Big companies that prefer proprietary software seems to prefer to give business to each other, regardless pf the much higher price tag. Of the few machines I've played with the Bsquared plugin on, it usually hung the browser in seconds, and many other stability problems. But I guess they'll get it right eventually...
I also talked to Google about Gnash for Android several times, but they don't appear to be interested in the slightest. Unfortunately, the only people willing to support Gnash with any funding are people that believe strongly in free software solutions already. To those people, I can't thank you enough!
- rob -
Free Software can be a great benefit to the hardware folks like ARM, and can be great for a mobile platform like Android, but it's sad that these groups don't seem to take any interest in what the Free Software community is offering. That's why it's so important for people to donate time, code, and/or money to projects like Gnash. Software Freedom isn't going to just happen without people like you and me stepping up and getting stuff done.
Slashdot Mirror
It'd be easier for them to just upgrade .NET to be incompatible with everything they promised not to sue over. Then they can sue when people upgrade, because there's no promise covering the new versions.
Steps:
The PRS-505 is apparently a version of the Sony Reader. The latest version is the PRS-700, which looks to be about $350 right now.
It is? Really? I see this leading to "Don't publish stories on X person who has been kidnapped because they might kill him" to "Don't publish this unverified and unlikely dirty bomb threat to Y city because you'll cause mass panic and death."
At some point people have to made judgment calls. At what level do we call a bomb threat "unlikely" ? It's easy to determine when a bomb threat is real (like, say, when we find a bomb or it goes off), but essentially impossible to determine the converse.
The slippery slope seems to bottom out at the "Temporarily supressing stories when there is a clear and credible threat to human life."
Ummm. And that couldn't be manipulated by a government or large group how?
Which is one I'm okay with as long as you keep that big fat line of "clear and credible threat to human life." Give wikipedians and the founders of wiki a little credit, they're not going to accept things like "Don't publish that this politician lied because there is a threat to human life," or "Don't publish this about scientology because someone could die over it."
I'm not saying that what Wikipedia did was unjustified, I'm just concerned about the slippery slope. Do you have any doubts that there are journalists in the US right now who have been told not to reveal details of our federal government or actions of their agents due to "potential loss of human life" ? Sure. And some of that may be justified, but considering that there are Secret Courts that administer Secret Laws that mere ordinary citizens such as you and I are not even allowed to read, I understand the reluctance of others to simply accept the fact that Wikipedia, an encyclopedia by the people and for the people, might censor some information.
I mean, if Wikipedia is going to consider censoring information such as this, then they should put it up for a vote to the community. Obviously they'd have to vote on some basic rules ahead of time, but honestly if it's "the open encyclopedia that anyone can edit," the community should vote on its rules of governance. That way the power comes from the people, instead of the elite holding all of the power and granting a tiny subset of it to the community.
Riiiiight. What's a qubit?
If I tell you, I'll lose my superposition high and collapse.
This idea was invented by Shampoo.
Investigators do not believe Campbell had any contact with the three girls, but "when you have the face of a small child affixed to a nude body of a mature woman, it's going to be the state's position that this is for sexual gratification and that this is simulated sexual activity," Assistant District Attorney Dave Denny said
"It's definitely on the increase," said Justin Fitzsimmons, a former prosecutor and senior attorney with the National Center for the Prosecution of Child Abuse, part of the National District Attorneys' Association. "People are trying to come up with creative ways to continue to sexually exploit children using digital evidence."
Great story, but I'm confused about what he did and what he's being charged with. Has the DA described the victim and explained how they're negatively affected in this case? Was this man trying to distribute the mashed-up pictures? Was this man found with the pictures on a personal computer? What happened here?
The whole reason we have laws prohibiting sex with children or erotic photography of children is that we believe that they are immature and are unable to make clear, well-thought-out, rational decisions about their actions. Well, that and the fact that we're a country descended from Puritans and a bunch of churchgoing folk. When considering similar cases in the past, SCOTUS took the eminently reasonable stance that depictions of child pornography that did not involve actual children were legal. This case is very interesting, as it does involve photos of underage children, but as long as the man did not try to distribute the pictures and took reasonable steps to do so, then what persons were harmed?
This case is also very interesting as it seems to hinge on taking two completely legal, distributable components -- a picture of a child and a picture of pornography -- and making something illegal by blending the two. This distinction has an important legal distinction with physical objects all the time, as it is illegal to distribute large quantities of explosives such as ANFO, but legal to distribute fuel oil and fertilizer unblended and separate. With pictures and print, aside from possible slander/libel charges due to misrepresentation, I can't think of any situation in which the mashup of two legally distributable documents would be found to be illegal.
It will be very interesting to see how the court deals with this case.
Fifty comments in this thread and no one has mentioned the Software Freedom Law Center? Amateurs!
The lead developer for FlashGot needs to contact the SFLC. Right. Now. The SFLC has lawyers on staff who eat companies like this for breakfast. Or at least, you know, they'll give them a very stern talking-to.
He shouldn't contact the supposed violators (that could cause legal murkiness), he should not go fishing around for evidence of the violation (again, more lawyerly problems), he should not pass Go, and in no way shape or form should he try to collect $200 from anyone.
Once he talks to the lawyers then he'll know what steps he should take to document the violation and then to approach the violators. By putting his ducks in a row first and by communicating with a lawyer, he'll have a much easier time approaching the Sothink company and getting the violation resolved.
Pro tip: The last time I emailed the SFLC it took 13 days for them to respond, so in order to get the ball rolling on resolving this problem I'd suggest picking up the phone and calling them.
Do it surreptitiously so as to avoid the Streisand effect and you may actually succeed, depending on the specific literary work in question.
Yeah, but when have you ever heard of that happening?
- RG>
You'll only hear about it if the attacker fails...
Bezos said 'that he sees Kindle-the-device and Kindle-the-book-format as two separate business models
What's next? Kindle the Lunchbox? Kindle the Flamethrower?
As TFA states, it sounds like Amazon is charging full price for the hardware just because they can. Welcome to the Quest For More Money!
Were I a Debian leader, I would simply approach Microsoft with the Mono code and the ECMA code of conduct [ecma-international.org] and demand it in writing that for this snapshot of the code you have a forever royalty free to interact with .NET.
What if someone wants to fix a bug in Mono or update it? Licenses that only cover snapshots of code or certain signed binaries are probably more of a headache than having no license at all. At least in the latter case you're less likely to have users be deluded into thinking that they're legally covered.
Peer-to-peer reviews of individual diffs using good workflow tools have been very effective at several places I have worked and in open-source projects to which I have committed.
This is basically how we work at my lab. Anything going into the master branch of our multimedia engine needs peer review; anything going into a multimedia project needs peer review after we've hit beta (roughly speaking).
In my experience code review is a very helpful part of development. It often catches stupid errors and can be an important piece of keeping the programming team abreast of everything that's going into the codebase.
If you don't like unit tests (or at least the idea of writing unit tests -- I often fail at writing them before I write my code), then you might consider peer review of code a big hassle. Personally, I think the benefits are well worth the cost.
Yes, but talk like that will just make you popular with the lesbians.
Which is perfectly alright. But if you're straight it's a lonely existence.
I dunno... I mean, sure, lesbians often have friends that are gay as well. But in my experience they tend to have female friends that are straight or bi, so I find that it generally works out okay.
I could engage in some huge diatribe about how you're objectifying women and you shouldn't be a douche online 'cause that makes the geek girls uncomfortable.
But I'm not even going to need that line. I'm just going to point out what she says on her blog:
Vim automatic spell checking is my crutch
Vim. Vim!. As in "Mmmmmmm, I love vi."
Arrrrggggghhhhh!!!! So sad. Another soul lost...
Okay, all together now: "I wish they all could be Emacs girls..."
@RegularFry, thanks for the other email address -- Palm just got back to me:
From: Opensourcequestions
To: Qubit
Subject: RE: FOSS used in the Pre?
Hello [Qubit],
Many thanks for the email.
We are in the process of preparing the packages and our modifications
to upload them to our open source web site - http://opensource.palm.com./
The specific page where the packages will be posted is:
http://opensource.palm.com/packages.html. For now, the page says
"Coming soon" but we expect to have the packages ready and uploaded
in about 2 weeks.
All the best,
Palm Open Source Team
It sounds like they're acting in good faith here. One could theoretically be a stickler and say that they aren't providing the sources now, but considering how long it could take to send them snail-mail and then get back a printout or CD of code via media mail, I think that 2 weeks isn't half bad.
If they haven't posted anything on the site in 2 weeks I'll post something on my blog and then try emailing them back again.
From the front page of the ShareALot.org website:
Home Services
Offered by HorseyGirl - Pet Sitting - 10 stars/hr
If you live near Parker Rd, I'd be happy to take care of your animal while your on vacation. For 10 stars a day, I'll feed your animal twice, play with it, and if it's sick I'll call you. Call my parents at 919-969-8609, and ask if Caitlin can take care of your pet.
HorseyGirl wants to take care of my pet? Ummmm... is that a legit post or are you just seeing an influx of people who got kicked off of Craigslist for offering erotic services?
Have you called up someone at Palm and requested it yet?
Yes (see my post up in the thread).
The GPL says that source can be provided on demand. I wonder if anyone's asked them?
From: Qubit
To: pdn@palm.com
Subject: FOSS used in the Pre?
Hi,
I've read a lot about the Palm Pre in the media and it sure looks like
a slick device. I currently have a Treo650, and while it's actually
humming along pretty well I think could be convinced to upgrade to the
Pre. I probably wouldn't switch for a few months, as I would have to
go though a little hassle of changing carriers, but the advanced
features of the Pre would certainly make my life a lot easier!
From what I read on Wikipedia and in the first chapter of the O'Reilly
webOS book, the Pre runs on an embedded Linux platform and leverages a
number of FOSS programs like WebKit. I'm really interested to hear
what changes you've made to WebKit and the Linux kernel for the Pre
and if you use any other FOSS software on the system. Does Palm have a
website where I could read about these changes and download source
files?
Thanks,
-- Qubit
If this doesn't garner any replies (I might try a few different email addresses @ palm), I'll write a snailmail letter to Palm directly.
As I am not yet in possession of a copy of their webOS it's true that they could politely turn down my request, but I hope that they'll just post a copy of their modifications up on their website somewhere. It's not like it's an onerous task to throw up a read-only repo. Heck, I'm sure that GitHub or Gitorious would be more than happy to host the FOSS code changes that Palm made.
I assume the root image indicates modifications to GPL source, like Webkit.
Have they published the changes?
WebKit is not GPLed. Their main page states that they are an open source project (their words) with portions available under BSD and LGPL licenses.
Palm doesn't have to release anything if they use BSD code in their software stack. If they use LGPL code then I believe that they have to release their changes and provide a method allowing the end user to replace the LGPLed library with a different library. I'm no lawyer, so I'd suggest that you look at the license for the details.
Doesn't that mean they're obliged to release their source anyway
That's pretty much the assumption I was working on... :-)
(or will be, when the item ships)?
According to Wikipedia it has already shipped: Available: June 6th, 2009 (Sprint Nextel).
That's why I've waited until now to ask for the kernel sources!
Cracking open the ROM is nifty and all (although it might cause issues for you later if you want to develop on the platform), but what I still want to know is where are the Palm Pre Linux kernel sources?.
I've looked all over the Palm sites and even Googled for it, but I haven't come up with anything but speculation. I can't believe that they're using a prebuilt kernel from TI, so what gives?
that's why ambulances are fitted with blue lights and sirens.
Maybe in the UK, but in the US I believe that flashing blue lights are strictly reserved for law enforcement.
Is there another color reserved for law enforcement in the UK, or is it just kind of a pick-your-own-color free for all amongst the emergency services? :-)
At least we can still see the Triffids...for now.
Speaking of the bright side, keep your eyes peeled for bright comets.
No, wait, scratch that.
I mean, scratch the directive, not your eyes. Just keep your eyes down.
Poor underprivileged and poverty stricken students. No computer, no degree, no hope.
What if we just scale up FreeGeek, say to eleven?
I'm not saying it's going to be easy, but if you start with the FreeGeek mission statement:
[The FreeGeek mission is] to recycle technology
and provide access
to computers, the internet, education and job skills
in exchange for community service.
And you tweak that a little bit and get:
The California Universal Technology Enablers (CUTE) will
recycle technology
and provide access
to computers and the internet
for students
in exchange for community service
Any student would have the ability (maybe it will be a part of their computers & technology homework?) to spend time in a FreeGeek-ish community center helping to recycle technology and build computers for reuse. Students who do not have a computer at home would be able to receive a computer through this service. Students under a certain age would not work directly with the recycling aspects due to safety concerns, but they could help out with other tasks.
I'm not exactly sure how the Internet access problem would be solved, but in high-density enough areas some kind of ad-hoc mesh networking might be possible (although AFAIK community mesh networks tech isn't quite ready yet).
The problem is that in order to make this plan work you'd need a lot of time and energy from the community. And you'd need it to happy in not just one town, but in each town or part of a big city all across California. People would need to step up bigtime to make something like that happen, and with the current finances of the state government these community organizations could have trouble getting off the ground without initial injections of cash.
They added a feature to donate money to open source projects. Or even allowed projects to sell their own open-source software in the store. Or sell for cost add-ons to the open source software. Yes, open source software could very well be downloaded elsewhere for free, but people might well pay for the convenience of getting it one place.
But who does (or should) the money go to?
Sometimes funding FOSS development is relatively easy -- you've got one program that you use all the time, it's written by a single guy (or group of guys), and they've all agreed to have money go to a single organization that has nonprofit status, making it easy to just cut them a check.
For all the rest of the projects, funding development is not so easy.
Lots of projects say things like "Yeah... take a look at the commit logs and decide who you want to fund. Most developers have an Amazon wishlist or a hardware wishlist." While I understand their situation, it would be a lot easier for me if I could just send money to some organization or person. Otherwise I agonize over who to send what to. That's the simple truth.
Speaking of funding FOSS projects, I'm going to put in a shameless plug for my article Free Software starts in your pocket. I'm kind of "beta testing" it right now, and while it doesn't solve the problem of how to give to FOSS projects that I mentioned above, it does solve the problem of remembering to donate money regularly.
the status for the support of full Flash (with all actionscripts)
Gnash is getting extremely close to being a drop-in Free Software replacement for the Adobe Flash Player. In the linked videos, the ARM director of mobile computing was talking about how the ARM folks were working with Adobe to get Adobe Flash running on the ARM processors, but Gnash has already had ARM support for years. If they're demoing Ubuntu -- a Free Software OS -- on these machines, then why not use a Free Software program to play Flash programs on them? Why not invest their time and energy in the Free Software project?
Rob Savoye (lead dev for Gnash) wrote a bit on this topic on the gnash-dev mailing list:
Jason Guiditta wrote:
> Just saw this...article...bsquared porting flash lite to run on an upcoming dell
> netbook.
Yes, I'm familiar with Bsquared. They're porting the Adobe v10 to
embedded platforms, basically getting rid of Flash Lite, which has
always been somewhat limited. I've talked to several company's also
talking to Bsquared.
> ...This seems like a perfect opportunity to get some
> funding for gnash, since it is already designed to run on so many
> platforms. If a big company like Dell is willing to pay to get flash
> well-supported on their netbook, why could that player not be gnash?
We'd need a contact at a sufficiently high level. Of the companies I
know using BSquared's promised flashplayer for ARM, MIPS, etc... have
decided they'd rather spend hundreds of thousands of $$$ for the
Bsquared solution, than give much smaller amounts to Gnash, which
already runs on the ARM and Android. Big companies that prefer
proprietary software seems to prefer to give business to each other,
regardless pf the much higher price tag. Of the few machines I've played
with the Bsquared plugin on, it usually hung the browser in seconds, and
many other stability problems. But I guess they'll get it right
eventually...
I also talked to Google about Gnash for Android several times, but
they don't appear to be interested in the slightest. Unfortunately, the
only people willing to support Gnash with any funding are people that
believe strongly in free software solutions already. To those people, I
can't thank you enough!
- rob -
Free Software can be a great benefit to the hardware folks like ARM, and can be great for a mobile platform like Android, but it's sad that these groups don't seem to take any interest in what the Free Software community is offering. That's why it's so important for people to donate time, code, and/or money to projects like Gnash. Software Freedom isn't going to just happen without people like you and me stepping up and getting stuff done.