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User: jbn-o

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  1. Not only are your values perverted (another poster rightly points out that you can't take it with you) what's left behind is a bad way to treat people—proprietary software is rightly identified as user-subjugating by rms. Technical achievement and business deals come and go, but treating people ethically sticks with people for a long time and sets a great example for how we can run a society that we can live with.

    In fact, Steve Jobs (while heading up NeXT) was the first commercial copyright infringer of GCC, then known as the GNU C Compiler later the GNU Compiler Collection when it compiled a lot more languages than just C. NeXT needed a compiler, GCC did the job, and NeXT wrote Objective-C support for GCC then chose to distribute only object code for NeXT's GCC variant. This was a clear violation of the GNU GPL v2 (the relevant GCC license at the time) as there was no complete corresponding source code on offer or copy distributed alongside the binaries. Someone from the FSF (I'm not sure who, Eben Moglen perhaps?) had a talk with NeXT and after some discussions (which I'm guessing were quite unpleasant for Jobs and NeXT's lawyers to hear) NeXT ended up doing what they should have done from the start: shipping complete corresponding source code to their variant of GCC with the GCC binaries. The copy I saw was in a box of Extended Density (2.88MB) floppy disks.

    Brad Kuhn, former FSF Executive Director current President and Distinguished Technologist at the Software Freedom Conservancy, has told this story before and he (probably rightly) speculates this is what drove Apple to become the irrational GPL-hater they are today: NeXT got caught treating their users badly, violating GCC's license, and subverting a license designed to let them do what they needed while also treating the users justly. This is why Apple is moving toward a non-copylefted compiler (which Kuhn speculates they'll someday stop contributing to when it becomes good enough for them to use without caring about contributing back). This is why Apple switched away from the (I'm told better functioning) Samba to some proprietary SMB implementation for MacOS X. I'm told some other GPL-covered software on MacOS X remains out of date; if that's so, this is probably why. And it's telling that Apple is no rush to replace CUPS as they did Samba and GCC—Apple bought Easy Software (which wrote CUPS) thus making Apple CUPS' copyright holder so Apple went from being a GPL licensee to being a GPL licensor. This also helps illustrate why Apple's view of the GPL is irrational: GPL-covered programs were perfectly good for them throughout NeXT and Apple's early days with MacOS X, and the GPL is apparently remains a fine license when licensing to others. But share and share alike is apparently not the way they want to treat their users for plenty of other software they distribute.

  2. Stallman has long pointed to relevant stories on Amazon Employee Explains the Poor Working Conditions of An Amazon Warehouse · · Score: 1

    There are informative links to relevant stories about Foxconn and Pegatron (the sweatshops Apple switched to after Foxconn) on Richard Stallman's website. Some on Amazon's worker exploitation as well.

  3. Re:Ethical basis is of free software, not open sou on How the Quakers Became Unlikely Economic Innovators by Inventing the Price Tag (aeon.co) · · Score: 1

    Probably because that's not what I corrected, that's not the only thing that needed explanation, because glib quips are not informative or prone to mature discussion, and because the name of the social movement is free software not free source.

  4. Ethical basis is of free software, not open source on How the Quakers Became Unlikely Economic Innovators by Inventing the Price Tag (aeon.co) · · Score: 1

    Open source software started out as a moral crusade...

    No it didn't. The free software movement started over a decade before open source and began as an ethics-based social movement which was also apparently economically viable for some including founder Stallman and some businesses such as Red Hat and Cygnus. But free software never framed the issues it addresses around a business-first philosophy.

    Later after seeing how software freedom posed a threat to proprietary software control over the user, the open source development methodology was developed as a reaction that would try to reframe the issue away from caring about a user's software freedom and into a means of convincing developers to license their work to allow for nonfree derivatives (or at the least not draw strong distinctions between freedom-preserving "copyleft" licenses and "non-copyleft" licenses that don't try to preserve software freedom, hence the lack of clear distinction between these licenses in the OSI's license list). That focus aims to benefit the open source's primary audience: businesses. This development methodology is a disposable front by which its advocates endorse the idea that following their development methodology will make software more powerful and reliable. But this isn't always true, and some proprietary software is already powerful and reliable leaving "open source" as no real challenge to proprietary control over the user. But it was never meant to be such a challenge, so this philosophy's proponents don't consider this to be a problem.

    The GNU Project recognized this reality long ago and wrote about it in a couple of essays (older, newer). Here's a relevant excerpt from the newer essay pointing out how a free software activist and an open source enthusiast react to learning about a powerful, reliable proprietary program:

    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 that is powerful and reliable, even though it does not respect the users' freedom. Free software activists and open source enthusiasts will react very differently 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 I value my freedom more. So I reject your program. I will get my work done some other way, and support a project to develop a free replacement." If we value our freedom, we can act to maintain and defend it.

    Linus Torvalds' use and endorsement of Bitkeeper years ago is an example of the open source enthusiast. He clearly rejects software freedom (read just about anything he says on the topic) and shows his disdain to users of his fork of the Linux kernel as well; that fork of the Linux kernel contains non-free software. The GNU Linux-libre fork of the Linux kernel removes non-free software, providing a kernel one can (ironically) distribute in full compliance with the license under which the kernel Linux is distributed—the GNU GPLv2.

  5. Mild critiques eventually become endorsements on Facebook Competitor Orkut Relaunches as 'Hello' (bloombergquint.com) · · Score: 1

    There is no web version of it to use on a computer.

    While true that's an incredibly weak criticism of Hello (nee Orkut). In time that could change, and this critique would suggest that somehow makes Hello worth considering.

    A more thoroughgoing critique is that Hello just another central-point-of-censorship/tracker regardless of what their current terms of service and/or developer promises say. Switching from Facebook to this or some workalike is switching masters or switching parties who spy on you, not getting away from being spied upon. Google's saying used to be "Don't be evil" but as far as we know Google always spied on their users, Google distributes proprietary malware, and Google pushes other central/single-point-of-censorship services that could be done in a privacy and freedom-respecting way (such as free software-based, decentralized, real-time chat). The fix for this is possible but not in line with any business built to be yet-another spying service. This a far better reason to reject Hello and to reject anything else with the same centralized architecture.

  6. Ethics matters more, business is a nicety on 'Open Source Initiative' President Interviewed by Linux Journal (linuxjournal.com) · · Score: 1

    And free software doesn't even discriminate against business decisions. Contrary to some of the FUD posted on sites like /., free software licenses (even strongly-copylefted free software licenses such as the GNU GPL) don't prohibit money-making. But the free software movement doesn't consider business interests above all else, nor should it. The free software movement is (as the parent, sadly anonymous, poster said) an ethics-based social movement. The principal decision concerns how to treat others properly with digital computers. If one finds a way to do make a business while doing that, great. The free software movement is on record for decades telling people to charge as much money as one can make in that endeavor. Cygnus found a way to do that for many years providing improvements to GCC, then Red Hat bought that company. But there are other ways to make money and, frankly, capitalism doesn't allow most people to spend their time doing what they enjoy or find interesting.

    But the open source development methodology and Open Source Initiative were not founded to promote ethical examination; quite the opposite. That group sought to remove ethics from their pitch to businesses and even nay say any framing of the issues around ethics. For many years they told the world a free software focus was "ideological tub-thumping" (as if their views are not an ideology or having an ideology is itself somehow objectionable). They saw free software framing and licenses as competing with the interests of their business proprietor friends and sought to intervene by posing as well-meaning beneficiaries but consistently encourage non-copylefted free software where the chief benefactors are proprietors (such as Apple and Qualcomm with LLVM which is rapidly becoming a nonfree compiler due to the nonfree software one needs to make practical use of the compiler). Today some "open source" proponents strongly argue one should not defend their license choice, and thus render software licensed under the GPL or AGPL into a work licensed under CC0 (which forgoes all rights in the work).

    Encouraging people not to distinguish among approved licenses is another problem the OSI fosters. A lack of critical consideration creates the impression that one license is just as good as another, so people pick among licenses on other criteria such as brevity of license or perceived simplicity of the license (shorter licenses are often deceptively simpler; the new BSD and MIT X11 license don't handle software idea patents and thus can present practical problems for derivatives, something monied proprietors count on). The FSF, in contrast, helps people understand the difference between licenses including their practical consequences and when to make compromises.

    It's no coincidence or accident that the overwhelmingly corporate computer press mentions the name "open source" so much and rarely frames anything around software freedom. That comes as a direct result of whose interests are being served by the two philosophies. Free software doesn't nay say business but doesn't give up software freedom to promote business desires. Open source proponents frequently drop their entire development methodology in the face of powerful, reliable proprietary software (such as the recent case of Red Hat endorsing the use of Microsoft's patent-covered and proprietary software, running GNU/kWindows or a GNU-based VM atop Windows as Microsoft has promoted, or Linus Torvalds' use and endorsement of Bitkeeper years ago which ended up being a reason why we have Git today). Years ago (circa 2007), the FSF published "Why Open Source Misses the Point of Free Software", a follow-up and improvement on an even older essay "Why 'Free Software' is better than 'Open Source'". The n

  7. Software freedom boosts privacy on Google Chrome To Boost User Privacy by Improving Cookies Handling Procedure (bleepingcomputer.com) · · Score: 1

    Actually the browser's author or what that author does is both inaccurate (Google is not just about advertising) and irrelevant. If Google Chrome were published as free software—software that respected a user's freedom to run, inspect, modify, and share published software—users could inspect the source code, change what they didn't like, run the variant they prefer, and share their improved version. Users don't have these freedoms with Google Chrome, Chrome is proprietary (nonfree, user-subjugating) software.

    So users have to decide to reject the software or have blind faith that Google will do right by them and believe that it is in Google's interest to "boost user privacy" at all. The mechanism by which Google purports to do this is irrelevant because Google got to where it is by spying on and censoring users. Proprietary software is often malware and Google's proprietary software is no exception.

  8. Unfit "security pros" like non-freedom on Chrome Is Scanning Files on Your Computer, and People Are Freaking Out (vice.com) · · Score: 1

    ...and the one security pros often recommend...

    Don't let allegations of popularity (regardless of whether they're true) hamper better thinking. Any so-called "security pro" that pushes for proprietary software is unfit to be called a computer "security professional". Proprietary (non-free, user-subjugating) software is never under the control of the user. It doesn't matter what the program purports to do, how popular someone claims it is, or who made the program. A lack of software freedom for the user is untrustworthy by default. And trusting a massive spy operation (such as Google certainly is) should make the software suspect as well.

    With free software one doesn't need to trust the software—if you doubt the software in any way, you can inspect it to see what it does (or get someone you trust to do this for you), edit the software to suit your needs (or get someone to do this for you), and run the variant of the code you vetted and edited. Computer users have to fall back on trust when they're left without the information they need to make an informed judgment (precisely the judgment free software allows the user to make and proprietary software prevents users from making).

  9. Re:Just a Start. on 'What's Facebook?', Elon Musk Asks, As He Deletes SpaceX and Tesla Facebook Pages · · Score: 1

    And quit littering your language with branding too: "podcast"? I'd rather not celebrate an abusive organization or their products.

  10. Stallman was right. on 'What's Facebook?', Elon Musk Asks, As He Deletes SpaceX and Tesla Facebook Pages · · Score: 1

    The move comes months after Musk said Zuckerberg's understanding of AI was limited.

    But Mark Zuckerberg was Time magazine's "Person of the Year"!

  11. Re:It's not mainly about movie ticket prices on MoviePass' Low Subscription Price Just Got Lower (hollywoodreporter.com) · · Score: 1

    For me too, it's not mainly about movie ticket prices. It's about the horrible and long-lasting legislation corporate movie makers lobby for and the adverse effect on the public (unnecessary and unhelpful copyright term extension made worse by making it retroactive, for instance). I don't want to fund that, so I don't.

    And I also don't agree with Americans who downplay or criticize connecting what they're paying to see with that legislation as if the two are somehow unrelated. It wasn't long ago that the same 'history begins now' kind of thinking led people to think having a Facebook page was de rigeur but now it's in vogue to get rid of one's Facebook page because of the horrible ways Facebook treated people and Facebook users are coming around to seeing that. So things pitched as "inevitable" or "necessary" are sometimes soon exposed as bullshit. Sometimes seeing through the PR happens later.

  12. Facebook has always been monstrous. on Mark Zuckerberg AWOL From Facebook's Data Leak Damage Control Session (thedailybeast.com) · · Score: 5, Informative

    Objecting to Facebook on the basis of surveillance? That's hardly new. Software freedom fighters got there years ago.

    Free Software Foundation got there earlier. From publishing https://www.fsf.org/facebook published on on Dec 20, 2010. FSF & GNU Project founder Richard Stallman has been rightly objecting to Facebook for years in his talks and on his personal website.

    Long-time former FSF lawyer Eben Moglen rightly called Facebook a monstrous surveillance engine in talks and he pointed out the ugliness of Facebook's endless surveillance (at length in part 3 but in other places in the same lecture series as well). See http://snowdenandthefuture.info/ for the entire series of talks.

  13. You never win with proprietary software. on Microsoft Wants To Force Windows 10 Mail Users To Use Edge For Email Links (theverge.com) · · Score: 1

    Plus I host my own IMAP server and don't feel like giving all my personal info to Google/M$/Yahoo/Apple.

    You're running Thunderbird (a free software program; a program that respects it's user's freedoms to run, inspect, share, and modify the software) on top of non-free Microsoft Windows (proprietary, user-subjugating software). Microsoft has all the power they need to get your IMAP credentials. If you have Google, Apple, or other proprietary software running on the same system they likely can read your stored credentials or read your keystrokes, mouse clicks, and screen grab whatever they want too. So you've likely already given those credentials away without realizing it.

    Windows users have already been through many instances of Microsoft asserting its control over the user: tricking users into switching from Windows 7 to Windows 10, ignoring the so-called privacy settings thus rendering them irrelevant even if set to ostensibly maximize a user's privacy, and so much more. There's simply no sound argument for believing that running any program on Windows or changing any Windows settings in any way will result in making Windows respect a user's choices when they conflict with what Microsoft wants. As with all proprietary software, ultimately the proprietor controls how the software behaves and therefore users only get as much control as the proprietor allows.

    If you want to be in more full control over your computing (as one might surmise from the unusual choice to run your own IMAP server), you really should consider switching to a fully-free software OS such as a GNU/Linux system where you install only free software on top of that.

  14. You're naively talking about proprietary (nonfree, user-subjugating) software as if the user has any real control over it. Microsoft's antics with Windows alone prove time and again that the proprietor is always in control, and the user only gets to control something with the allowed limits set by the proprietor.

    This is why you have Microsoft getting away with tricking people into accepting a switch from Windows 7 to Windows 10, ignoring so-called privacy settings, and more.

    Quit believing that the right preference tweak, registry setting, or anything else will really assert control over Windows. And quit believing that the (very likely) proprietary black box of your so-called antivirus software will "protect" the other black box of an operating system from harm. Using proprietary software to prevent harm from reaching other proprietary software ignores how software actually works, ignores the massive disrespect for a user's software freedom, and leaves the user with multiple masters who have more say about what that computer does than the user ever will.

  15. Re:"Nobody got fired buying Cisco" on Hardcoded Password Found in Cisco Software (bleepingcomputer.com) · · Score: 1

    I agree with part of what you wrote: proprietary software organizations that have known NSA, CIA, etc. ties are certainly not to be trusted. But the reason they're not to be trusted has nothing to do with the country they call home. American proprietors, for instance, were not to be trusted regardless of any ties to mass surveillance. The linkage to mass surveillance is piling on; taking something that's already rejectable (proprietary software) and adding more reason to be suspicious. We have to treat all proprietary software as untrusted (regardless of who or where it comes from) precisely because we don't get the freedoms of free software (to run, inspect, share, and modify).

    Regarding "Nothing from the USA can be trusted": There are lots of American free software developers, and they're all helping us right along side every other free software developer. And as with any other free software, you don't need to trust the developer to trust free software: inspect the code (or get someone you trust to do this for you), make necessary changes, and run the code you trust. I also encourage you to help your community by publishing the improved code.

    Dismissing developers due to the country they come from or work in a way of saying you didn't think through how software freedom works.

  16. Privacy can be respected when users pick free SW on Firefox Quantum Leader Takes Over All Mozilla Products (cnet.com) · · Score: 2

    Mozilla claims to care about user privacy, but through mismanagement actually handed the dominant market share position to Google, which makes its revenues by piercing the very veil of privacy that Mozilla claimed to value.

    It seems to me that users bear responsibility here, and there's not much Mozilla could have done. Any user who wants to complain about proprietary software not respecting their privacy but chooses non-free software can't be taken terribly seriously on their claim of desiring privacy. Perhaps I'm misunderstanding your point in the above? I'll try to explain what I'm getting at: It seems to me that users who claim to care about privacy should have made choices commensurate with that claim—continue using a free software web browser (such as Mozilla Firefox or a Firefox derivative with only free software add-ons installed). These users are right to care about their privacy and others' privacy and to place a priority on privacy, even to the point of saying "no" to more featureful and robust browsers. Therefore such users should not have switched to a proprietary (user-subjugating, non-free) browser such as Google Chrome where no user can make any realistic claim to having their privacy respected.

  17. "Ditching" freedom for dependency is never wise. on Mozilla Removes Individual Cookie Management in Firefox 60 (ghacks.net) · · Score: 1

    If Firefox 60 is released officially without the functionality to manage individual cookies, then users have a good reason to be angry. Let's wait and see what happens before ditching Firefox.

    It would be sadly ironic to "ditch Firefox" by switching to a non-free (proprietary, user-subjugating) browser in response to the lack of user control Firefox didn't give you in this build. If there's one thing we can say with certainty about proprietary software: users only get as much control as the proprietors want to give. There are a lot of examples showing how proprietary software is often malware. Technically less capable free software is a better choice than technically more capable proprietary software because of software freedom (the freedom to run, inspect, share, and modify published software)—that freedom is the means by which technical issues can be resolved. One can make less capable software more capable by leveraging one's software freedom. One cannot add software freedom to proprietary software.

  18. Evidence to show these drives push down prices? on Samsung Starts Mass Producing an SSD With Monstrous 30.72TB Capacity (betanews.com) · · Score: 0

    Is there any evidence to show that these high-capacity SSDs result in lower-priced higher capacity SSDs in the near-term future?

    Perhaps some data indicating some kind of mass storage unit became more affordable or remained the same price but increased capacity (thus lowering the cost/unit-of-storage)?

    If so, what is that evidence? The article was almost indistinguishable from a press release and didn't point to any such evidence.

  19. It's a class issue: power over the users is unjust on Flight Sim Company Embeds Malware To Steal Pirates' Passwords (torrentfreak.com) · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The lesson is you and your son have been had, taken advantage of by a system intent on deceiving you.

    The chief underlying problem here is proprietary (non-free, user-subjugating) software. Software you're not allowed to run, inspect, modify, or share (also known as 'software freedom'). Proprietary software is licensed and distributed to keep you from running the program despite doing normal maintenance, software meant to keep you from treating your friends as friends by sharing a copy, inspecting the program to see what it does, and distributed to prevent you from modifying your copy the program should you wish to for any reason.

    I experienced something quite similar with the Commodore 64: A video game called Elite on the C-64 had an anti-copying scheme so clumsy and prone to problems it drove me to understand what was really going on. Today we'd properly call this DRM—digital restrictions management (expanded that way because I take the side of the user class, not the publisher class) which was only visited upon those who obtained their copy of the program in a way the publisher found acceptable. Typically this meant buying a copy, but I later came to understand some copies were distributed gratis. The packaged game came with media, a manual, and a flat plastic device with a see-through window. The device could be bent so it resembled a table like an inverted letter "U". On starting the game, the user was shown some blocky image that looked incomprehensible. When the plastic device was folded, placed on the monitor at the proper distance (via the "legs" of the device), and peered through one could see the blocky image turn into something readable. If I recall correctly, the readable image was a page number reference in the manual one was expected to look up and type in the proper word to get past this stage of the loading program.

    After I did this a couple of times it dawned on me that those who engage in filesharing and treating friends like friends (sometimes propagandistically called "pirates") never have to put up with this. Only the people who used the publisher-distributed copy did. And most of those users had paid for this treatment.

    Those who shared copies were doing us all a favor: they let us try programs before buying a copy, they let us run copies that didn't have what we now call DRM; the anti-copying code had been stripped away. They let us have copies that one could copy in an ordinary fashion, no need for special copiers (such as "nibblers", or any copier that knew how to get past the errors which were deliberately added to the disk to defeat the standard file and disk copiers). There was no need to work around the issue by using audio tapes instead of disks (since audio tapes didn't have copy-prevention added to the media). These so-called "pirates" were doing us a service, a service I might have paid for if offered the opportunity to pay a publisher for a headache-free copy of the program.

    Later I obtained a memory snapshotting cartridge called "Isepic" which let me make my own copy of the RAM-resident portion of the game. Isepic produced a copy which loaded faster, never prompted me for the manual lookup, and played identically to the other copy loaded from the distributor's media (no surprise there, it was the same code being loaded into memory). I never loaded the distributor's media again. But this got me to thinking about all the other programs (not just games) that treated the users this way across all the computers I had used. And I began to realize that this was a scam perpetrated on the people who treated the publishers the best. We were literally exchanging our money for being treated badly. And this harm pushed on the users was indiscriminate, just like the flight simulator company did here.

    There was one more issue to wrestle with: proprietary software. This was an issue even the filesha

  20. Software non-freedom runs against user's interests on Hey Microsoft, Stop Installing Apps On My PC Without Asking (howtogeek.com) · · Score: 1

    So unless you buy the enterprise edition of Windows (Cost: $84 per PC, per year, minimum 5 licenses), or are attending a university that will enable you to obtain the Education edition on windows (Cost: averages about $9,970 per year) you can't even do what you suggest. Windows explicitly ignores the settings that turns this functionality off.

    Actually the reason you can't really control Windows is because Windows is proprietary software. No amount of registry changes, config file changes, or changing one's practices with Windows will place Windows under the user's control. That's the same for any variant of Windows no matter how much one pays or if the software bears the name "enterprise".

    Microsoft has a universal backdoor in Windows. Even disconnecting the Windows computer from the network won't place that computer under the owner's control. What the article complains about isn't new: tricking and forcibly pushing users into switching to Windows 10, privacy controls that ignore the user's settings and rat on the user regardless, and dropping support for processors Microsoft doesn't want to support instead of letting the users do the work are all part of the same theme—this is what non-free software can do.

  21. We don't need conveniences, we need education. on Ask Slashdot: What Is Missing In Tech Today? · · Score: 2

    And the means to implement privacy-respecting software: software freedom—the freedom to run, inspect, share, and modify published computer software.

    You can't have proprietary software protect your privacy because proprietary software is inherently untrustworthy. Users are not allowed to know what it does, fix or improve the software, share copies (either verbatim copies or modified copies) to help their community, and sometimes the software is so restrictive it will refuse to let the user run or access the data the program controls access to (such as DRM schemes are designed to implement). We can have better computing that serves the public's needs but we'll have to fight for it and code for that future. We'll also have to teach people to understand what software freedom is and value software freedom for its own sake. Virtually every story on repeater sites like /. have to do with software freedom, and the shills that frequent sites like this know it. That's why they publish proprietary software-accepting/convenience-prioritizing views masquerading as something the public wants. How do we know the public wants their privacy respected? Take it from Glenn Greenwald and Edward Snowden in their talk almost exactly one year ago (youtube-dl and avideo can help you download this without subjecting yourself to YouTube's nonfree software)—nobody has taken up Greenwald on his offer to allow Greenwald to become their impostor by sending him the credentials to all of their accounts (no exceptions for bank accounts, social media accounts, dating website accounts, etc.). Privacy is still desired, but people aren't as computer literate as they should be to make wiser choices about electronic goods and services. Ignorance is not rejection of privacy, it's a social need going unfulfilled.

  22. How dare people control the computers they own! on Hackers Manage To Run Linux On a Nintendo Switch (techcrunch.com) · · Score: 3, Insightful

    What you point out is a part of a larger and more significant problem that gets into another /. thread—"What is missing in tech today?". What's missing is an appreciation that computer owners ought to be able to use their computers in the way they wish, fully owning and controlling their own computers. What's present is a focus on relatively minor issues like what gadgets people might find slightly more convenient to use (but apparently not to own).

    Since people want this (the phrase "jailbreaking" is a testament to this; we wouldn't need this term if people enjoyed having their devices "jailed") the corporate proprietor-friendly media (and repeater sites) remind us when covering a story like this in multiple ways: from eschewing any reminder of the freedom to run, inspect, share, and modify published computer software like calling the installed OS "Linux" even when Debian calls their system GNU/Linux and the proper name is on the screenshot (just above the "fail0verflow" textual graphic), to using propagandistic language. There's also suggestion that the code is to be seen as "potential[ly] weak" instead of a means of allowing owners to control their own computers, and blaming fail0verflow should they choose to publish the means by which they installed Debian GNU/Linux on the Nintendo Switch for enabling "homebrew apps and (of course) software piracy". Ridiculous unchallenged and undefended anti-user views throughout which is par for the course in corporate media.

  23. OSI: Doing as well as it was designed to do. on New 'Open Source Initiative' Site Announces Anniversary Celebrations and Outreach Programs (opensource.net) · · Score: 1

    The OSI website also used to call mentioning software freedom "ideological tub-thumping". Hardly the kind of language one would use if one wants to seek a respectful difference with the older free software movement (which predates the OSI by over a decade), and there's also the suggestion about open source being "pragmatic" as if free software wasn't pragmatic. If software freedom wasn't pragmatic there would be no need for a proprietor-friendly reaction to challenge it and push for advocating for almost the same software minus the software freedom.

    Instead, cozying up to proprietors puts the OSI in a jam when they send out their speakers to make nice with free software activists because the speakers have to avoid explaining away the points the GNU Project brings up far more insightfully in its two main essays (older essay, newer essay) on the topic.

    The name "open source" is apparently used by proprietors to put a shine on endorsing proprietary software. Take the recent /. post about "Microsoft Releases Skype As a Snap For Linux" which points us to an article that says "[Microsoft] has actually transformed into an open source champion" while it endorses running software that could not qualify as open source (and studiously avoids any language that might bring software freedom to mind). This kind of conflict comes up from time to time and is a direct result of the coziness with proprietors you refer to; I recall some time ago reading another /. story about an essay by Red Hat lawyer Mark Webbink which tried to explain copyleft without using the word "copyleft" or drawing attention to anything to do with software freedom despite that copyleft is a strategy for preserving the freedoms of free software in derivative works (a strategy for preserving an ethical way to treat people with regard to computers). FOSDEM 2018 just ended and in a talk on the Open Source Initiative we're reminded of a quote from Linus Torvalds, "In real open source, you have the right to control your own destiny.". Torvalds never liked software freedom but found the GPLv2 to be a handy license to use for his published projects such as the Linux kernel and Git. This quote strikes me as an indicator of the same problem: when the phrase "open source" has been lumped in with people who don't adopt that development methodology, and one seeks to place business activity above other social needs (such as controlling one's own computer), one needs a new term ("real open source") to describe a desired distinction.

  24. People love privacy. Always have. on Are Music CDs Dying? Best Buy Stops Selling CDs (complex.com) · · Score: 1

    Don't you believe that people don't like privacy. Almost one year ago, Noam Chomsky, Glenn Greenwald, and Edward Snowden spoke on privacy (use youtube-dl or avideo to download the video so you don't run YouTube's nonfree software by visiting their site) and the whole talk is worth hearing.

    One part stands out—when Greenwald talks of common privacy myths around 28m23s (such as "I don't have anything to hide") by pointing out the results of his ongoing privacy test—he has an email account he invites anyone to send mail to listing all of the credentials and connection points for every account they control (including work accounts, bank accounts, social media accounts, and all sites for anything else). Why? He explains quite straightforwardly, "I just want to be able to troll through what you're doing online and post under your name because obviously if you're not a bad person you should have nothing to hide.".

    The result is obvious and predictable: "To this day, not a single person has taken me up on this offer.".

    "The people who say that they don't value their privacy don't actually mean it at all." Greenwald reminds us, and he's right. There has never been a time where people didn't value their privacy and any corporate sycophant who wants to claim otherwise here (or on any other corporate news repeater site) is either ignorant or lying.

  25. Re:Last DRM free media on Are Music CDs Dying? Best Buy Stops Selling CDs (complex.com) · · Score: 1

    Purchasing CDs with cash allows one to buy anonymously without an account (such as one uses with Amazon or Apple both businesses one has good reason to consider not doing business with at all anyhow, given how they treat the public, their employees, and vendors).

    And for all we know the shift to DRM-free media will turn out to be revisited ultimately moving audio back to DRM-riddled media built on uncritical acceptance from people endorsing doing business with abusers like Amazon and Apple. The big difference being that DRM'd audio was hard to justify while widely-playable audio CDs were being sold everywhere consumers were likely to shop (such as big box retail stores). If audio CDs are not being sold much anymore from large vendors (including online) and people are willing to buy into here-and-gone-again walled gardens known as app stores and streaming services, it seems likely to me that business greed will remain. Businesses will still want to push how much more control over the user they can achieve by no longer distributing audio in DRM-free audio codecs. There may even come a day when people can be convinced to rebuy the same media multiple times again (VHS, LaserDisc, DVD, Blu-ray, streaming for video; cassette, CD, streaming for audio). This strikes me as something an uncreative and nervous investor would find to be a desirable outcome and right in line with what they've been pursuing for decades.