And how will the people they phone up be able to help them? The professionals users phone up can help in the same way car mechanics help car drivers, the way electricians, plumbers, and roofers help homeowners—all of these professionals (and many more) have the freedom to tinker and share information. In computer software we have had to value these freedoms for their own sake, politically organize, and fight for these freedoms for all computer users against anyone who would distribute proprietary software. We do this by making replacement programs that do the same jobs as proprietary software, making new programs that do interesting new things, and making it easier for people to use the free software we have created and distributed. When proprietors see us do this they clamp down harder by using new legal regimes to try and stop us from competing along side us (proprietors like controlled economy where they are the monopolist, they don't like competition). That has been the reality of the free software movement for over 2 decades now.
Users are not commonly programmers and they don't have the ability to make or fix programs. But users commonly want things simpler than they are, or they want programs that don't spy on them, or they want programs that don't take away what they thought was theirs (not surprisingly users apparently don't like DRM), and users want many other things some of which conflict with what other users want. Similarly most car drivers aren't mechanics, but they want stereos installed, sunroofs put in, oil changed, tires repaired or replaced, and other changes. And not all drivers want exactly the same things in or on their cars. Any homeowner will tell you that no matter how well their house suited its previous owner the house became great because people put time into making changes to that house. And every homeowner knows that their tastes will demand nothing different from them because no single arrangement of anything is to everyone's liking. Even if you have no problems with how government functions today you might have problems with government later. So in all cases we solve the problem in the same way: define and defend freedoms to let people do what they want with their stuff, and foster a culture around the freedoms we defined. You know it would be foolish to relinquish your freedoms of assembly and speech based on what you think and feel now (you might need them later), you wouldn't tolerate a car with the hood welded shut (you might want to get in there later), and you wouldn't buy a house with proprietary plumbing only one plumber could legally fix (you might want to leverage competing plumbers later).
We deserve freedoms to make our computers do what we want. We aren't harming others by inspecting, running, sharing or modifying software, playing our movies anytime we want, or using computers without being tracked (to name a few actions that collide with proprietors' interests). There's no ethical justification for keeping people from software freedom.
You really should listen to any of RMS' talks on the story of the free software movement so you can hear his logic behind why his framing of the debate makes sense and aims at a larger more important social issue: social solidarity.
Please do cite evidence of an organized movement for user's freedoms, preferably one which specifies what those freedoms are, prior to the free software movement RMS started.
It seems like Microsoft has no problem dodging any real punishment in the US. The EU's antitrust actions against Microsoft, mild as they are, put the US' antitrust punishments to shame. So then it seems that Microsoft has no problem making more money as American individuals and organizations buy Microsoft's goods and services.
One of the major problems with this thread of the conversation is the assumption that illegally leveraging monopoly and violating the law around the world can be made right by philanthropically spending some of the ill-gotten gain. A more reasonable view of the larger issues here is to adequately punish the wrongdoing and recognize that saving people's lives, providing potable water, and decent universal health care (whether or not the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation does this) shouldn't depend on the whims of the wealthy.
Please explain how having software that works in the interests of the user where the user has the freedom to make the changes they want, limited chiefly by the user's willingness to alter it, is in any way similar to being called "a dumb slave".
[...] more than that [free software] I enjoy software that just works.
Nobody is arguing against powerful reliable software. But when that software is proprietary instead of free one wonders for whom the software "just works"; who benefits from a program that spies on the user, keeps users from adding translations into the user's native language, disallows technical users (like programmers) from fixing bugs or adding features, or makes it a copyright infringement to share any version of the program with their fellows (whether improved or not, whether shared commercially or not). Powerful and reliable software can be bad for the user (see RMS' essay on "Why Open Source Misses the Point of Free Software" specifically the section called "Powerful, reliable software can be bad").
As someone who doesn't really follow the free software movement, I think he should have focused on promoting the advantages of open-source, rather than bashing those that are free to license their software whichever way they choose.
Actually the power of licensing is not a good unto itself. With computer software copyright licensing is used to keep users from controlling their computers and licensing is used to ensure that users have the freedom to control their computers. The difference depends on what the license says. And the FSF has done more to write licenses giving users freedom than the folks behind the open source movement. The FSF would rather you didn't conflate their work with the work of the open source movement. RMS doesn't speak for or encourage anyone to become an open source supporter. He advocates for the older free software movement. The two movements have remarkably different philosophies that both drive the two movements to approve of the same sets of licenses and posit radically different takes on proprietary software.
Utter nonsense - and it reflects badly on the FSF. How exactly are you going to persuade these companies to become more open-source friendly, if all you do is bash them?
You assume that that is his goal and then argue against your own assumption. You also ignore the enormous changes in computing that are a direct result of RMS' and the FSF's actions (their licenses and the powerful body of software licensed under them being one such action). RMS isn't trying to convince any company to "become more open-source friendly". He's fighting for users freedoms by writing and encouraging others to write free software licensed primarily under strongly copylefted free software licenses. When companies do this, and many have, that's great. But history shows us that independence doesn't come from companies it comes from individuals. Lots of people make the mistake of giving primacy to business interests when really corporations ought to be subservient to the people's power.
Nobody gets screwed over by a political party more than its most loyal supporters...
I can think of lots of Iraqis, Afghani, and Americans who are dead or will soon be killed because of many Congresspeople's ongoing support of the American occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan. This includes Sen. Obama who recently supported allocating another $165 billion for these occupations. American voters handed the US Congress to the Democrats because they believed that the Democrats would get the US out of the wars. But there are still there are some Americans ready to defend continued war funding by saying that opposing the funding would have "hurt the troops".
Only with your participation: by running proprietary software. Free software systems can be improved to continue to grant users power over their devices.
And Sen. Obama is offering exactly what as an alternative to more war? Certainly not immediate withdrawal from Iraq, despite how many Americans want that (it'll be a bloodbath if we leave now, we're told, as if Iraqi are so busy laying roses at our soldiers and mercenaries' feet). His Iran threat to the Chicago Tribune ("[T]he big question is going to be, if Iran is resistant to these pressures [to stop its nuclear program], including economic sanctions, which I hope will be imposed if they do not cooperate, at what point... if any, are we going to take military action?... [L]aunching some missile strikes into Iran is not the optimal position for us to be in" given the ongoing war in Iraq. "On the other hand, having a radical Muslim theocracy in possession of nuclear weapons is worse.") and his recent vote for allocating $165 billion for the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan (including $51 billion dollars for veterans' education) tell me that he, like any other corporate-funded Democrat, have no principled objection to war or to these wars in particular.
Democrats are responsible for every war in the last 108 years, excluding the two Bush wars and the Reagan Grenada farce. Democrats are responsible for dropping, not one, but two atomic bombs on the innocent citizens of Japan. Democrats deserve no slack, and should be given none.
I play games I can play. If those games require 3D drawing, I guess that the CPU does it. This is far from the best way to do this task, but to focus on this gives games too much ground. Games are not critical for getting jobs done. They're fun to play but most computer users don't need them to do work. Far more important and pressing than games are the issues surrounding programs people use daily. Document format issues, fighting software patents, and providing free software implementations of programs people need to do their everyday work is critical.
The BIOS issue is being worked on with Coreboot.org. I plan to purchase a new computer someday soon (my current main machine is roughly a decade old) and I intend that that computer will run Coreboot. I'm told that my XO-1 runs a free software BIOS; this machine would be fine for me if it were a little faster to improve interactive response, but I use it all the same. I understand that there's now at least one mail-order place that will sell users a machine with gNewSense GNU/Linux preloaded and I think they're eager to ship a Coreboot machine preloaded so I'll keep my eye on them for my next computer. Proprietary software is anti-social, and a proprietary BIOS is certainly no exception.
I don't know of a hardware compatibility list for gNewSense GNU/Linux, but I do know that the FSF has maintained lists of hardware that work with free software. I'd imagine that the folks who maintain gNewSense would appreciate your help in maintaining such a list.
Few things in the world are for everybody, but history shows us that freedom is worth some hard work to build and defend. If that means I do without something for a while, or I have to do something another way, that's a small price to pay. As it happens I don't need 3D hardware and my ASUS cardbus wireless card works with gNewSense GNU/Linux because it requires no firmware, hence there's no issue of uploading proprietary firmware to the device to make it useful. Using it couldn't be easier: I plug it in, it lights up and the system finds a wireless access point. If I leave it plugged in I only have to turn on my computer to get online wirelessly. I think that software freedom is worth some sacrifice and I find that I have to sacrifice less and less over time. I find it interesting to note how dependent on proprietary software many GNU/Linux users are. The push to put more proprietary software on a GNU-based system more clearly illuminates to me the difference between "open source" and "free software" right along the lines described in the latter part of "Why Open Source Misses the Point of Free Software":
The idea of open source is that allowing users to change and redistribute the software will make it more powerful and reliable. But this is not guaranteed. Developers of proprietary software are not necessarily incompetent. Sometimes they produce a program which is powerful and reliable, even though it does not respect the users' freedom. How will free software activists and open source enthusiasts react to that?
A pure open source enthusiast, one that is not at all influenced by the ideals of free software, will say, "I am surprised you were able to make the program work so well without using our development model, but you did. How can I get a copy?" This attitude will reward schemes that take away our freedom, leading to its loss.
The free software activist will say, "Your program is very attractive, but not at the price of my freedom. So I have to do without it. Instead I will support a project to develop a free replacement." If we value our freedom, we can act to maintain and defend it.
I don't have such a problem because I refuse to judge the situation we face by just one case. When I think of all the people the RIAA harasses and gets loads of money from regarding alleged non-commercial infringement (consider the many informative stories promoted here by NewYorkCountryLawyer), I became convinced that the RIAA was a proponent and beneficiary of going too far, and I was also convinced that the NET Act is another step of metaphorically swatting flies with sledgehammers.
The length of copyright is hardly "immaterial" because that's another mechanism by which the organizations that paid for the NET Act withhold contributing to the public domain in exchange for their monopoly power; another way they ripoff the public. The DMCA end-run around expiring copyright is another tool by which they can contribute to culture only on their terms (remember that the while the work published on a home recording may be in the public domain, a copy prevention scheme which prevents full access to that work never expires). Exceptions are few in number, need to be applied for, hard to apply for, and eventually expire. That we all can leverage these powers doesn't begin to make up for the loss to cultural enrichment and observance of a bargain that copyright is supposed to represent. And as to enforcement: How many of our freedoms will we end up giving up so that they can enforce these new laws? I'm guessing the stories about this haven't reached the mainstream media enough to be pointed to by/. yet.
When I consider the severe imbalance of benefit and punishment, I find it hard to agree with your conclusions that the RIAA (and their corporate clientele) has a point here. When the corporate copyright holders violate law they face no real punishment. Wasn't Microsoft found guilty of copyright infringement (commercial, at that) in France some years back? I don't recall a big deal being made of this in the US (the same country that is currently being shamed by the fruits of EU's antitrust actions against Microsoft). Some years ago in the New York Times I recall reading a story involving the "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" movie soundtrack which had apparently been commercially produced and distributed without finding one of the people owed royalties resulting, initially, in unjust enrichment for the publishers (later the publishers chanced to find him and paid him). I have a hard time believing those publishers would get anywhere near the same punishment "Dextro" got (and you can't imprison a corporation for they have no bodies to incarcerate and no souls to save, as a wise man pointed out). UMG, an RIAA member, was recently discussed on/. when "I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property" wrote about how UMG "had no trouble with Jammie Thomas being ordered to pay $222k, some 13,214 times the actual costs, they [UMG] thought that being ordered to pay ten times the actual damages in Bridgeport v. Justin Combs was just too much". NewYorkCountryLawyer calculated "the Jammie Thomas award bore a ratio to actual damages of 26,428:1".
What's also sad is how people who similarly campaign for higher causes (Richard Stallman on free software is a prime example) are maligned until situations like this come along and show us how right he is to insist on framing the debate in terms of a user's freedom to control their lives, relish social solidarity, and cooperate in a society of peers where you're limited largely by the restrictions you impose on yourself. Slashdotters cite Stallman's "The Right to Read" as we quickly head toward a culture that denies how everything we do is built on the past (Lawrence Lessig frequently reminded us of this) but how many read the dystopic short story and take it to heart?
Stallman can be hard to get along with at times, to be sure, but understanding his message doesn't require you to be his buddy and it should be harder than it is (judging by posts I've seen on so many discussion websites) to convince people to throw away their freedom in pursuit of some agenda set by business.
I'm not sure that is a freedom; if you're determining what other people can have that sounds like you are setting terms for others, a restriction that would have more effect on them than you. Hence this sounds like a power.
Also, how should we rid ourselves of the power of the media corporations which have the power to dictate what data we're allowed to receive if we don't set up a network where we willingly pass on all messages anyone might want to pass along?
This really has nothing to do with a voting machine's software being "closed source".
From the voter's perspective, there's no real solution to this problem but hand-counting of voter verified paper ballots. For me the ultimate solution to this problem is this: Voters walk up to a machine they had no part in preparing and (optionally) use it to prepare a voter-verified paper ballot. That ballot is then stored and counted by hand. This process makes the trustworthiness of the machine completely irrelevant. If any voter doesn't trust the machine to do this job, they should be given the freedom to fill out the ballot by hand (also handy when the computer breaks down or the power runs out). There are substantial benefits to using computers to prepare voter-verified paper ballots and there are substantial benefits to using exclusively free software voting machines but trustworthiness is not one of those benefits. Nobody can trust any computer they don't control and no voter is given the freedom to completely control their voting machine. Even if trusted voting machine software existed nobody would be able to know that their voting machine was running it.
Contrary to another poster's view on this, no audit trail would be sufficient to engender trust in any code because the preparation of the audit trail would always be in question.
The benefits of a free software voting machine lie in the government and public avoidance of monopoly (thus reducing maintenance cost and possibly increasing machine flexibility), and supporting business opportunities (politicians love it when they can say some project "creates jobs" in their district), and in turn leaving the body that paid for the machines in a position where they can make the machines meet their needs. All proprietary software distributors are monopolists. It is this monopoly that each proprietary software voting machine manufacturer works to protect; this is what's really at stake for those businesses. If any one of them were more user-focused than they are (ES&S is in a great place to be this user-focused since they don't depend on other software for their machines), they would see free software voting machines as a point of sale. They could be the best situated to compete in the maintenance market for their brand of machines because they've known their machines the longest, so ostensibly they know those machines best. Governments will think this way when it comes to purchasing support contracts whether long-term or ad-hoc.
Alas, competing monopolies is the way of things right now in the US. The voting machine makers have the country carved up like the mafia in The Godfather movies and they exploit county after county in every sale. I ought to know, I helped Champaign County, Illinois recommend a pair of voting machines to the county board. We saw demos from a few vendors (ES&S, Hart Intercivic, and Diebold via their local distributor) and picked the least worst pair of machines (ES&S).
The Wired article referenced in this/. story was remarkably poorly written. It did a poor job of showing why Reiser was found guilty beyond a reasonable doubt (the appropriate burden of proof in murder cases). Merely being "rude", "annoying", long-winded, and giving implausible explanations for the scant evidence provided shouldn't make someone guilty of murder. The article conveys no clear sense that this trial is an appropriate test of the prosecution: if the prosecution didn't make their case, the defendant is supposed to go free. The American system of justice is supposed to err on the side of letting murderers go free rather than convict the innocent. Toward the end of the article we get a gem in the same vein as how the judge found Reiser's attitude (the judge is quoted as saying "There are not enough words in the English language to describe the way you are.". Wired retorts "But the jurors found a word on Monday: guilty.").
Wired treats the reader to a series of highly suspicious bits of evidence (a waterlogged car, blood on a pedestal in Reiser's house, etc.) but no summary connecting the evidence into a cohesive argument with expert testimony. Nothing to show us readers that the prosecution's story is beyond reasonable doubt and no critical commentary to explain the apparent disparity between the lack of prosecutorial obligation and the end result. After reading the Wired article I'm left to conclude that the prosecution simply didn't meet their burden. Thus I'm compelled to ask: Was the jury so pissed off at Reiser's demeanor (which the judge was said to describe as "rude" and "arrogant") that they were allowed to forget their obligation to make the prosecution prove its case? Was the judge (who comes off in the Wired article as amazingly unprofessional) unwilling to set aside the jury's verdict and enter a not guilty verdict because the prosecution didn't do their job?
My main computer predates those that can run Coreboot, I look forward to purchasing a computer that can run Coreboot next time I buy a computer. I don't want to get rid of it until it is incapable of running at all. I understand and respect that progress of all kinds proceeds slowly, improving over time. So I'm not going to deny myself the use of a computer until things are such that I can run only a free software machine (GNU, an OS born out of a pursuit of freedom, would be nowhere near where it is had hackers done that). However I will only install a completely free OS on it with free software to do my work. Games are not a big part of my computing, but I enjoy some bzflag, Mahjong, and card games once in a while. I might pick up some word games later on.
I run only free software on my computers, so Sun's implementation of Java software was unavailable to me. I used other Java software as needed but I largely simply did without Java. The Java Trap has ended for this software (similar non-free dependency traps exist for other software). I think what Sun is doing is a fine thing and I look forward to trying Sun's newly liberated Java software.
This headline assumes that the pro-war faction brought onto the corporate so-called "news" were analysts to begin with and didn't just gain the "analyst" label by the fact that they were featured on the corporate news. They were not impartial experts. They were merely pundits, sent to lie to drum up popular support for an illegal and immoral war. As Peter Hart from Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting explained on today's Democracy Now! (transcript, video, high-quality audio, smaller size audio):
One of the most shocking things in the story is that in early 2003, these guys got a briefing about WMDs, and the government said, "We actually don't have hard evidence right now that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction." Did any of them go on the air and say that? No. The Pentagon, I think, had total control and total faith that these guys would deliver the message that they intended to deliver to the public, and that's exactly what they did, and the media did very little to counteract this overwhelming propaganda campaign from the Pentagon.
What the Pentagon did is conspire with the media and over seventy-five retired military officers to spread lies about the invasion and occupation of Iraq; propaganda which continues to this day. The pundits weren't being manipulated, the public was. The pundits participated with their consent. Since one expects the Pentagon to get their story out (I don't excuse it, I merely expect it), one might wonder why the media didn't do their job and challenge those in power to justify their case for war? It would be far better to headline this story a failure of media to do their job as reporters. Again, Hart explains:
I think the extent of the briefings was somewhat shocking and the blase attitude from the networks. They didn't care what military contractors these guys were representing when they were out at the studio. They didn't care that the Pentagon was flying them on their own dime to Iraq. Just basic journalistic judgment was completely lacking here. So I think the story is really about a media failure, more than a Pentagon failure. The Pentagon did exactly what you would expect to do, taking advantage of this media bias in favor of having more and more generals on the air when the country is at war.
You don't cite any sources or define what you mean when you say "Asus is doing very well with its flagship offering.". However the chief error is more profound than that. Asus' business model isn't our problem either. Asus isn't running an educational project. Asus is just another corporation making just another laptop.
Many people conflate OLPC's work (which really is an educational project) with making a low-end ultra-inexpensive laptop because they view everything through first world consumer's eyes. These same people tend also to be shocked that OLPC isn't using the G1G1 program to generate lots of profit.
My software freedom is too high a price to pay. I'm certainly not willing to go along with an alleged relationship between exclusionary power over ideas one can use in software and the speed with which those ideas are used to make software (where exclusive power is said to provoke people to develop these products). I remember computer software developing at a perfectly fine pace when software patents either didn't exist or were rare. What we're seeing today is more likely a power grab than anything to do with a justification for product development.
And you're going to use 25-year-old stories to conclude about present-day ambitions, goals, and methodologies?
No, we'll look at that evidence to notice that the power relationship hasn't changed. More recent evidence might make the danger seem more present but the threat and the danger to software use remains.
Richard Stallman points out how this works, and the specific value of cross-licensing, in his talk on "The Danger of Software Patents" or "Software Patents—Barriers to development". He's given this talk many times and recordings and transcripts are readily available (thanks to all you recorders and transcribers). He references an article in "Think" magazine, #5, 1990 (IBM's promotional magazine) which says that IBM gets "perhaps an order of magnitude" more value from cross-licensing than they do from licensing patents they own. The linked article quoting "Think" and the points raised there are well worth reading in their entirety—for IBM (the world's largest patent holder for many years running, by the way, thus compared to IBM everyone is "little") the trouble software patents create is hypothetical, for everyone else (including users) it's very real.
Please don't impose your ignorance of what BitTorrent is used for on all of us. Some of us know that the protocol is used for plenty of legal distribution. Also, about this notion that the protocol will prevent "legislation/judges ruling Bittorrent illegal", can you name instances where this has happened?
FOSS can be distributed or developed for a fee, as part of a business. Hence FOSS can be commercial software too. If you're only referring to the price someone pays to get a copy of the program, no significant distinction is made—proprietary and FOSS are available at every price, including free. The critical distinction between FOSS and non-free software has to do with what recipients of the software are allowed to do with the program when they get a copy.
I'd rather have software freedom and the practical benefits of allowing everyone the same freedoms I enjoy. This way I'm not relying on a proprietor to be shamed into acting (ostensibly but unverifiably) on my behalf. So on my personal computers at home I not only choose free software browsers, I choose free software operating systems too. Whenever I can I favor hardware that runs on free software as well.
Slashdot Mirror
And how will the people they phone up be able to help them? The professionals users phone up can help in the same way car mechanics help car drivers, the way electricians, plumbers, and roofers help homeowners—all of these professionals (and many more) have the freedom to tinker and share information. In computer software we have had to value these freedoms for their own sake, politically organize, and fight for these freedoms for all computer users against anyone who would distribute proprietary software. We do this by making replacement programs that do the same jobs as proprietary software, making new programs that do interesting new things, and making it easier for people to use the free software we have created and distributed. When proprietors see us do this they clamp down harder by using new legal regimes to try and stop us from competing along side us (proprietors like controlled economy where they are the monopolist, they don't like competition). That has been the reality of the free software movement for over 2 decades now.
Users are not commonly programmers and they don't have the ability to make or fix programs. But users commonly want things simpler than they are, or they want programs that don't spy on them, or they want programs that don't take away what they thought was theirs (not surprisingly users apparently don't like DRM), and users want many other things some of which conflict with what other users want. Similarly most car drivers aren't mechanics, but they want stereos installed, sunroofs put in, oil changed, tires repaired or replaced, and other changes. And not all drivers want exactly the same things in or on their cars. Any homeowner will tell you that no matter how well their house suited its previous owner the house became great because people put time into making changes to that house. And every homeowner knows that their tastes will demand nothing different from them because no single arrangement of anything is to everyone's liking. Even if you have no problems with how government functions today you might have problems with government later. So in all cases we solve the problem in the same way: define and defend freedoms to let people do what they want with their stuff, and foster a culture around the freedoms we defined. You know it would be foolish to relinquish your freedoms of assembly and speech based on what you think and feel now (you might need them later), you wouldn't tolerate a car with the hood welded shut (you might want to get in there later), and you wouldn't buy a house with proprietary plumbing only one plumber could legally fix (you might want to leverage competing plumbers later).
We deserve freedoms to make our computers do what we want. We aren't harming others by inspecting, running, sharing or modifying software, playing our movies anytime we want, or using computers without being tracked (to name a few actions that collide with proprietors' interests). There's no ethical justification for keeping people from software freedom.
You really should listen to any of RMS' talks on the story of the free software movement so you can hear his logic behind why his framing of the debate makes sense and aims at a larger more important social issue: social solidarity.
Please do cite evidence of an organized movement for user's freedoms, preferably one which specifies what those freedoms are, prior to the free software movement RMS started.
It seems like Microsoft has no problem dodging any real punishment in the US. The EU's antitrust actions against Microsoft, mild as they are, put the US' antitrust punishments to shame. So then it seems that Microsoft has no problem making more money as American individuals and organizations buy Microsoft's goods and services.
One of the major problems with this thread of the conversation is the assumption that illegally leveraging monopoly and violating the law around the world can be made right by philanthropically spending some of the ill-gotten gain. A more reasonable view of the larger issues here is to adequately punish the wrongdoing and recognize that saving people's lives, providing potable water, and decent universal health care (whether or not the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation does this) shouldn't depend on the whims of the wealthy.
Please explain how having software that works in the interests of the user where the user has the freedom to make the changes they want, limited chiefly by the user's willingness to alter it, is in any way similar to being called "a dumb slave".
Nobody is arguing against powerful reliable software. But when that software is proprietary instead of free one wonders for whom the software "just works"; who benefits from a program that spies on the user, keeps users from adding translations into the user's native language, disallows technical users (like programmers) from fixing bugs or adding features, or makes it a copyright infringement to share any version of the program with their fellows (whether improved or not, whether shared commercially or not). Powerful and reliable software can be bad for the user (see RMS' essay on "Why Open Source Misses the Point of Free Software" specifically the section called "Powerful, reliable software can be bad").
Actually the power of licensing is not a good unto itself. With computer software copyright licensing is used to keep users from controlling their computers and licensing is used to ensure that users have the freedom to control their computers. The difference depends on what the license says. And the FSF has done more to write licenses giving users freedom than the folks behind the open source movement. The FSF would rather you didn't conflate their work with the work of the open source movement. RMS doesn't speak for or encourage anyone to become an open source supporter. He advocates for the older free software movement. The two movements have remarkably different philosophies that both drive the two movements to approve of the same sets of licenses and posit radically different takes on proprietary software.
You assume that that is his goal and then argue against your own assumption. You also ignore the enormous changes in computing that are a direct result of RMS' and the FSF's actions (their licenses and the powerful body of software licensed under them being one such action). RMS isn't trying to convince any company to "become more open-source friendly". He's fighting for users freedoms by writing and encouraging others to write free software licensed primarily under strongly copylefted free software licenses. When companies do this, and many have, that's great. But history shows us that independence doesn't come from companies it comes from individuals. Lots of people make the mistake of giving primacy to business interests when really corporations ought to be subservient to the people's power.
I can think of lots of Iraqis, Afghani, and Americans who are dead or will soon be killed because of many Congresspeople's ongoing support of the American occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan. This includes Sen. Obama who recently supported allocating another $165 billion for these occupations. American voters handed the US Congress to the Democrats because they believed that the Democrats would get the US out of the wars. But there are still there are some Americans ready to defend continued war funding by saying that opposing the funding would have "hurt the troops".
Only with your participation: by running proprietary software. Free software systems can be improved to continue to grant users power over their devices.
And Sen. Obama is offering exactly what as an alternative to more war? Certainly not immediate withdrawal from Iraq, despite how many Americans want that (it'll be a bloodbath if we leave now, we're told, as if Iraqi are so busy laying roses at our soldiers and mercenaries' feet). His Iran threat to the Chicago Tribune ("[T]he big question is going to be, if Iran is resistant to these pressures [to stop its nuclear program], including economic sanctions, which I hope will be imposed if they do not cooperate, at what point ... if any, are we going to take military action? ... [L]aunching some missile strikes into Iran is not the optimal position for us to be in" given the ongoing war in Iraq. "On the other hand, having a radical Muslim theocracy in possession of nuclear weapons is worse.") and his recent vote for allocating $165 billion for the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan (including $51 billion dollars for veterans' education) tell me that he, like any other corporate-funded Democrat, have no principled objection to war or to these wars in particular.
As Cindy Sheehan recently reminded us, the Democrats have a strong history of war making and a lot to apologize for:
I play games I can play. If those games require 3D drawing, I guess that the CPU does it. This is far from the best way to do this task, but to focus on this gives games too much ground. Games are not critical for getting jobs done. They're fun to play but most computer users don't need them to do work. Far more important and pressing than games are the issues surrounding programs people use daily. Document format issues, fighting software patents, and providing free software implementations of programs people need to do their everyday work is critical.
The BIOS issue is being worked on with Coreboot.org. I plan to purchase a new computer someday soon (my current main machine is roughly a decade old) and I intend that that computer will run Coreboot. I'm told that my XO-1 runs a free software BIOS; this machine would be fine for me if it were a little faster to improve interactive response, but I use it all the same. I understand that there's now at least one mail-order place that will sell users a machine with gNewSense GNU/Linux preloaded and I think they're eager to ship a Coreboot machine preloaded so I'll keep my eye on them for my next computer. Proprietary software is anti-social, and a proprietary BIOS is certainly no exception.
I don't know of a hardware compatibility list for gNewSense GNU/Linux, but I do know that the FSF has maintained lists of hardware that work with free software. I'd imagine that the folks who maintain gNewSense would appreciate your help in maintaining such a list.
Few things in the world are for everybody, but history shows us that freedom is worth some hard work to build and defend. If that means I do without something for a while, or I have to do something another way, that's a small price to pay. As it happens I don't need 3D hardware and my ASUS cardbus wireless card works with gNewSense GNU/Linux because it requires no firmware, hence there's no issue of uploading proprietary firmware to the device to make it useful. Using it couldn't be easier: I plug it in, it lights up and the system finds a wireless access point. If I leave it plugged in I only have to turn on my computer to get online wirelessly. I think that software freedom is worth some sacrifice and I find that I have to sacrifice less and less over time. I find it interesting to note how dependent on proprietary software many GNU/Linux users are. The push to put more proprietary software on a GNU-based system more clearly illuminates to me the difference between "open source" and "free software" right along the lines described in the latter part of "Why Open Source Misses the Point of Free Software":
I don't have such a problem because I refuse to judge the situation we face by just one case. When I think of all the people the RIAA harasses and gets loads of money from regarding alleged non-commercial infringement (consider the many informative stories promoted here by NewYorkCountryLawyer), I became convinced that the RIAA was a proponent and beneficiary of going too far, and I was also convinced that the NET Act is another step of metaphorically swatting flies with sledgehammers.
The length of copyright is hardly "immaterial" because that's another mechanism by which the organizations that paid for the NET Act withhold contributing to the public domain in exchange for their monopoly power; another way they ripoff the public. The DMCA end-run around expiring copyright is another tool by which they can contribute to culture only on their terms (remember that the while the work published on a home recording may be in the public domain, a copy prevention scheme which prevents full access to that work never expires). Exceptions are few in number, need to be applied for, hard to apply for, and eventually expire. That we all can leverage these powers doesn't begin to make up for the loss to cultural enrichment and observance of a bargain that copyright is supposed to represent. And as to enforcement: How many of our freedoms will we end up giving up so that they can enforce these new laws? I'm guessing the stories about this haven't reached the mainstream media enough to be pointed to by /. yet.
When I consider the severe imbalance of benefit and punishment, I find it hard to agree with your conclusions that the RIAA (and their corporate clientele) has a point here. When the corporate copyright holders violate law they face no real punishment. Wasn't Microsoft found guilty of copyright infringement (commercial, at that) in France some years back? I don't recall a big deal being made of this in the US (the same country that is currently being shamed by the fruits of EU's antitrust actions against Microsoft). Some years ago in the New York Times I recall reading a story involving the "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" movie soundtrack which had apparently been commercially produced and distributed without finding one of the people owed royalties resulting, initially, in unjust enrichment for the publishers (later the publishers chanced to find him and paid him). I have a hard time believing those publishers would get anywhere near the same punishment "Dextro" got (and you can't imprison a corporation for they have no bodies to incarcerate and no souls to save, as a wise man pointed out). UMG, an RIAA member, was recently discussed on /. when "I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property" wrote about how UMG "had no trouble with Jammie Thomas being ordered to pay $222k, some 13,214 times the actual costs, they [UMG] thought that being ordered to pay ten times the actual damages in Bridgeport v. Justin Combs was just too much". NewYorkCountryLawyer calculated "the Jammie Thomas award bore a ratio to actual damages of 26,428:1".
What's also sad is how people who similarly campaign for higher causes (Richard Stallman on free software is a prime example) are maligned until situations like this come along and show us how right he is to insist on framing the debate in terms of a user's freedom to control their lives, relish social solidarity, and cooperate in a society of peers where you're limited largely by the restrictions you impose on yourself. Slashdotters cite Stallman's "The Right to Read" as we quickly head toward a culture that denies how everything we do is built on the past (Lawrence Lessig frequently reminded us of this) but how many read the dystopic short story and take it to heart?
Stallman can be hard to get along with at times, to be sure, but understanding his message doesn't require you to be his buddy and it should be harder than it is (judging by posts I've seen on so many discussion websites) to convince people to throw away their freedom in pursuit of some agenda set by business.
I'm not sure that is a freedom; if you're determining what other people can have that sounds like you are setting terms for others, a restriction that would have more effect on them than you. Hence this sounds like a power.
Also, how should we rid ourselves of the power of the media corporations which have the power to dictate what data we're allowed to receive if we don't set up a network where we willingly pass on all messages anyone might want to pass along?
This really has nothing to do with a voting machine's software being "closed source".
From the voter's perspective, there's no real solution to this problem but hand-counting of voter verified paper ballots. For me the ultimate solution to this problem is this: Voters walk up to a machine they had no part in preparing and (optionally) use it to prepare a voter-verified paper ballot. That ballot is then stored and counted by hand. This process makes the trustworthiness of the machine completely irrelevant. If any voter doesn't trust the machine to do this job, they should be given the freedom to fill out the ballot by hand (also handy when the computer breaks down or the power runs out). There are substantial benefits to using computers to prepare voter-verified paper ballots and there are substantial benefits to using exclusively free software voting machines but trustworthiness is not one of those benefits. Nobody can trust any computer they don't control and no voter is given the freedom to completely control their voting machine. Even if trusted voting machine software existed nobody would be able to know that their voting machine was running it.
Contrary to another poster's view on this, no audit trail would be sufficient to engender trust in any code because the preparation of the audit trail would always be in question.
The benefits of a free software voting machine lie in the government and public avoidance of monopoly (thus reducing maintenance cost and possibly increasing machine flexibility), and supporting business opportunities (politicians love it when they can say some project "creates jobs" in their district), and in turn leaving the body that paid for the machines in a position where they can make the machines meet their needs. All proprietary software distributors are monopolists. It is this monopoly that each proprietary software voting machine manufacturer works to protect; this is what's really at stake for those businesses. If any one of them were more user-focused than they are (ES&S is in a great place to be this user-focused since they don't depend on other software for their machines), they would see free software voting machines as a point of sale. They could be the best situated to compete in the maintenance market for their brand of machines because they've known their machines the longest, so ostensibly they know those machines best. Governments will think this way when it comes to purchasing support contracts whether long-term or ad-hoc.
Alas, competing monopolies is the way of things right now in the US. The voting machine makers have the country carved up like the mafia in The Godfather movies and they exploit county after county in every sale. I ought to know, I helped Champaign County, Illinois recommend a pair of voting machines to the county board. We saw demos from a few vendors (ES&S, Hart Intercivic, and Diebold via their local distributor) and picked the least worst pair of machines (ES&S).
The Wired article referenced in this /. story was remarkably poorly written. It did a poor job of showing why Reiser was found guilty beyond a reasonable doubt (the appropriate burden of proof in murder cases). Merely being "rude", "annoying", long-winded, and giving implausible explanations for the scant evidence provided shouldn't make someone guilty of murder. The article conveys no clear sense that this trial is an appropriate test of the prosecution: if the prosecution didn't make their case, the defendant is supposed to go free. The American system of justice is supposed to err on the side of letting murderers go free rather than convict the innocent. Toward the end of the article we get a gem in the same vein as how the judge found Reiser's attitude (the judge is quoted as saying "There are not enough words in the English language to describe the way you are.". Wired retorts "But the jurors found a word on Monday: guilty.").
Wired treats the reader to a series of highly suspicious bits of evidence (a waterlogged car, blood on a pedestal in Reiser's house, etc.) but no summary connecting the evidence into a cohesive argument with expert testimony. Nothing to show us readers that the prosecution's story is beyond reasonable doubt and no critical commentary to explain the apparent disparity between the lack of prosecutorial obligation and the end result. After reading the Wired article I'm left to conclude that the prosecution simply didn't meet their burden. Thus I'm compelled to ask: Was the jury so pissed off at Reiser's demeanor (which the judge was said to describe as "rude" and "arrogant") that they were allowed to forget their obligation to make the prosecution prove its case? Was the judge (who comes off in the Wired article as amazingly unprofessional) unwilling to set aside the jury's verdict and enter a not guilty verdict because the prosecution didn't do their job?
Perhaps this is just another instance of corporate media simply not doing their job.
My main computer predates those that can run Coreboot, I look forward to purchasing a computer that can run Coreboot next time I buy a computer. I don't want to get rid of it until it is incapable of running at all. I understand and respect that progress of all kinds proceeds slowly, improving over time. So I'm not going to deny myself the use of a computer until things are such that I can run only a free software machine (GNU, an OS born out of a pursuit of freedom, would be nowhere near where it is had hackers done that). However I will only install a completely free OS on it with free software to do my work. Games are not a big part of my computing, but I enjoy some bzflag, Mahjong, and card games once in a while. I might pick up some word games later on.
I run only free software on my computers, so Sun's implementation of Java software was unavailable to me. I used other Java software as needed but I largely simply did without Java. The Java Trap has ended for this software (similar non-free dependency traps exist for other software). I think what Sun is doing is a fine thing and I look forward to trying Sun's newly liberated Java software.
This headline assumes that the pro-war faction brought onto the corporate so-called "news" were analysts to begin with and didn't just gain the "analyst" label by the fact that they were featured on the corporate news. They were not impartial experts. They were merely pundits, sent to lie to drum up popular support for an illegal and immoral war. As Peter Hart from Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting explained on today's Democracy Now! (transcript, video, high-quality audio, smaller size audio):
What the Pentagon did is conspire with the media and over seventy-five retired military officers to spread lies about the invasion and occupation of Iraq; propaganda which continues to this day. The pundits weren't being manipulated, the public was. The pundits participated with their consent. Since one expects the Pentagon to get their story out (I don't excuse it, I merely expect it), one might wonder why the media didn't do their job and challenge those in power to justify their case for war? It would be far better to headline this story a failure of media to do their job as reporters. Again, Hart explains:
The New York Times didn't cover the media aspect of this problem probably because the Times was a willing participant in the lying. Apparently it still is.
You don't cite any sources or define what you mean when you say "Asus is doing very well with its flagship offering.". However the chief error is more profound than that. Asus' business model isn't our problem either. Asus isn't running an educational project. Asus is just another corporation making just another laptop.
Many people conflate OLPC's work (which really is an educational project) with making a low-end ultra-inexpensive laptop because they view everything through first world consumer's eyes. These same people tend also to be shocked that OLPC isn't using the G1G1 program to generate lots of profit.
My software freedom is too high a price to pay. I'm certainly not willing to go along with an alleged relationship between exclusionary power over ideas one can use in software and the speed with which those ideas are used to make software (where exclusive power is said to provoke people to develop these products). I remember computer software developing at a perfectly fine pace when software patents either didn't exist or were rare. What we're seeing today is more likely a power grab than anything to do with a justification for product development.
No, we'll look at that evidence to notice that the power relationship hasn't changed. More recent evidence might make the danger seem more present but the threat and the danger to software use remains.
Richard Stallman points out how this works, and the specific value of cross-licensing, in his talk on "The Danger of Software Patents" or "Software Patents—Barriers to development". He's given this talk many times and recordings and transcripts are readily available (thanks to all you recorders and transcribers). He references an article in "Think" magazine, #5, 1990 (IBM's promotional magazine) which says that IBM gets "perhaps an order of magnitude" more value from cross-licensing than they do from licensing patents they own. The linked article quoting "Think" and the points raised there are well worth reading in their entirety—for IBM (the world's largest patent holder for many years running, by the way, thus compared to IBM everyone is "little") the trouble software patents create is hypothetical, for everyone else (including users) it's very real.
Please don't impose your ignorance of what BitTorrent is used for on all of us. Some of us know that the protocol is used for plenty of legal distribution. Also, about this notion that the protocol will prevent "legislation/judges ruling Bittorrent illegal", can you name instances where this has happened?
I think you mean proprietary (or perhaps non-free) instead of commercial software. Perhaps you are right although your claim would be more convincing if it came with evidence.
FOSS can be distributed or developed for a fee, as part of a business. Hence FOSS can be commercial software too. If you're only referring to the price someone pays to get a copy of the program, no significant distinction is made—proprietary and FOSS are available at every price, including free. The critical distinction between FOSS and non-free software has to do with what recipients of the software are allowed to do with the program when they get a copy.
I'd rather have software freedom and the practical benefits of allowing everyone the same freedoms I enjoy. This way I'm not relying on a proprietor to be shamed into acting (ostensibly but unverifiably) on my behalf. So on my personal computers at home I not only choose free software browsers, I choose free software operating systems too. Whenever I can I favor hardware that runs on free software as well.