Basically Open Content and Free Software are sister-movements. Both are battles against the privatisation of knowledge.
Free Software has existed long before the FSF, but it wasn't called that way. In the same way Open content has always existed, long before we started calling it "Open Content". The most well known is the Gutenberg Project that started in '71. In the some way, the whole internet could be called Open Content.
Free Software as such was first defined by RMS, in reaction to the problem of proprietary software, and it became a movement to overcome that problem. In the same way Open Content, defined as such, is a reaction to the privatisation of what used to be public knowledge. The start of a true "Open Content Movement" is yet to come, but it will come.
Today you are able to buy a book. But if the book becomes an e-book, you can't buy it anymore, you just get a license. And these licenses become more and more restrictive like EULA's. And with DRM your e-book will destruct themselves after a month unless you keep paying and paying..
Now ask yourself the following: for centuries, public libraries have had an enormous beneficiary effect on our society by making information, accessible. But what is the digital equivalent of a public library? Once people will realise that there won't be a public digital library, just commercial content, a true "Open Content Movement" will be born with the goal of fighting this problem by creation free works that cannot be approriated with DRM.
Open Content today lacks a bit of a problem, because the privatisation of knowlegde is not yet really visible. But unfortunately, it will. I believe the Open Content Movement will grow from the field of education. Universities will have to choose. MIT and Rice already made their choice. MIT OpenCourseWare: http://ocw.mit.edu/ The Connexions Project: http://cnx.rice.edu/
what about other universities? Which one will take the next plunge?
California has started "The Open Source Textbook Project" to create freely distributable textbooks. http://www.opensourcetext.org/
Wikipedia recently started a textbook project textbook.wikipedia.org
Open content in Education Initiative http://open-education.org
Educommons: http://www.educommons.org
Physiology: http://harveyproject.org/
Open Source Physics http://www.opensourcephysics.org/
The Open Source Teaching Project http://ostp.open.ac.uk/project.htm
The Free University Project http://www.freeuniversityproject.org/
Open Source - Open Course http://www.tltgroup.org/OpenSource/Base.ht m http://www.life-open-content.org/index.html ht tp://www.opencourse.info/ http://www.opencourse.o rg http://www.fulcrum.org http://www.openhistory.net/
And if you are jewish check out this one: http://www.opensourcejudaism.com/ http://ww w.opensourcehaggadah.com/
But also third world countries will realise they have a lot to benefit from free accessible and free distributable content http://www.openknowledge.net/ The United Nations has a big role to play in this.
Quality control anyone? Distributed Proofreaders of Project gutenberg http://www.pgdp.net/c/ http://www.comm ontext.org/ http://www.theassayer.org/
Another thing that is absolute fitted for open content are more complete reference works. Projects that take one item to its full-depth of general encyclopedias:
wikipedia has 150.000 articles from mixed quality, but this in only 2 years. Imagine this project over 30 years.
Planetmath is an online community creating a Free Math-encyclopedia, this in reaction to what happened to Eric Weissteins World of Mathematics that suddenly disappeared from the web.
It simply means, give Linus the credit he deserves
Exactly,but I don't take away credit from someone else, that is what YOU do. You are naïve in thinking that Torvalds is so much more important than Stallman in creating the Free Software Movement.
I don't care what GNU is.
There, you said it all: I don't care about GNU. I don't care about the DMCA.I don't care about Sklyarov. I don't care about Felten. I don't care about Lessig. I don't care about patents. I don't care about DRM. Just leave me alone. And then it's Stallman that is self-centered? He is the one that makes *rational* arguments about it. Have you even bothered to read them? You're only playing ad hominem and carelessly showing off your ignorance. People like you make me realize what it must be like to be far ahead of your time, like Stallman obviously is. Sorry if that sounds insulting, it's not meant that way, really. The vision portrayed is the GNU-project goes *far* beyond "tools" or operating systems, or even software. I really hope that one day you can grasp that historical importance. I really, really do.
Just defending Stallman doesn't make me a troll. but it was by sheer chance that the FSF's GNU project provided the tools.
Excuse me? GNU is a top-down re-implementation of UNIX. And Linux is a re-implementation of a UNIX-kernel. Bringing the two together is then considered a miracle??
FSF created a sauce, i could make my own sauce
Obviously, you've never visited the gnu-site, how can a sane person claim he can write all that software by himself? You are *heavily* underestimating that importance of the GNU-project.
Stallman isn't trolling, asking to call it GNU/Linux keeps stirring Slashdot and many other sites. Everyone's talking about it, and again some total newbies will have heard about GNU for the first time. It's a tactic, too.
Besides, it's not that hard to understand:
Linux + GNU makes a working operating system. There's no arguing about that, is there?
Linus can take the GNU-tools and call it Linux,
FSF can take Linux and call it GNU.
And guess what? It's the same system! Why call the thing with two different names, and refute the most simple compromise? At first it may sound a little strange to call or write "GNU/Linux", but is tcp/ip, Mercedes-Benz or Universal-Vivendi any different?
and just happened by chance to use the GNU tools in it.
by chance?? How can you say that?
and being of the opinion that his creation should be freely available...
He just used the GPL-license. Otherwise, there would have been the requirement that it's just for non-commercial use. So goodbye Red Hat, IBM and all others.
If Linus wants to call his creation Linux, then I'll call it Linux.
Sure, I call the kernel "Linux" too, but you've just stated yourself that that Linus didn't create anything more than just a kernel. Torvalds does not make the distinction between the kernel and the whole operating system.
Linus accidently completed the GNU-Project, thus making it a succes.Where do you get the idea of failure?
Imagine you want the build a hotel, you build it gradually brick by brick, but everyone calls you a loser. But you build it further brick by brick, you create the fundaments to nobody sees, then you continue building floor by floor, but still everyone calls you a failure because is's not finished, it still needs an elevator inside. At the same time the someone else is having fun making an elevator. "Whaw, nice elevator, now i'm looking for a building to put it in."
You say: "whauw, my/our hotel is finished"
but still everyone calls you a failure, because it's not your elevator.
What should the name of the hotel be?
You: "I call it the Pong-hotel, because of my chinese fore-fathers" .
Elevator-guy: "I call my elevator "Ping", because of the sound an elevator makes when the doors go open. So it the "Ping-hotel."
You: let's be nice, let's make a deal, let's call it the Ping-Pong-hotel.
Because Linus succeeded where GNU failed
Hmm, GNU succeeded where Linus never started: they wrote a compiler, they wrote a text-editor, they wrote a shell...
Maybe we should call the "Linux Operating System" a failure: they never got any further than a kernel.
Slashdot Mirror
Basically Open Content and Free Software are sister-movements. Both are battles against the privatisation of knowledge.
.net/
Free Software has existed long before the FSF, but it wasn't called that way. In the same way Open content has always existed, long before we started calling it "Open Content". The most well known is the Gutenberg Project that started in '71. In the some way, the whole internet could be called Open Content.
Free Software as such was first defined by RMS, in reaction to the problem of proprietary software, and it became a movement to overcome that problem. In the same way Open Content, defined as such, is a reaction to the privatisation of what used to be public knowledge. The start of a true "Open Content Movement" is yet to come, but it will come.
Today you are able to buy a book. But if the book becomes an e-book, you can't buy it anymore, you just get a license. And these licenses become more and more restrictive like EULA's. And with DRM your e-book will destruct themselves after a month unless you keep paying and paying..
Now ask yourself the following: for centuries, public libraries have had an enormous beneficiary effect on our society by making information, accessible. But what is the digital equivalent of a public library? Once people will realise that there won't be a public digital library, just commercial content, a true "Open Content Movement" will be born with the goal of fighting this problem by creation free works that cannot be approriated with DRM.
Open Content today lacks a bit of a problem, because the privatisation of knowlegde is not yet really visible. But unfortunately, it will. I believe the Open Content Movement will grow from the field of education. Universities will have to choose. MIT and Rice already made their choice.
MIT OpenCourseWare: http://ocw.mit.edu/
The Connexions Project: http://cnx.rice.edu/
what about other universities? Which one will take the next plunge?
California has started "The Open Source Textbook Project" to create freely distributable textbooks.
http://www.opensourcetext.org/
Wikipedia recently started a textbook project
textbook.wikipedia.org
Open content in Education Initiative
http://open-education.org
Educommons: http://www.educommons.org
Physiology: http://harveyproject.org/
Open Source Physics
http://www.opensourcephysics.org/
The Open Source Teaching Project
http://ostp.open.ac.uk/project.htm
The Free University Project
http://www.freeuniversityproject.org/
Open Source - Open Course
http://www.tltgroup.org/OpenSource/Base.ht m
http://www.life-open-content.org/index.html
ht tp://www.opencourse.info/
http://www.opencourse.o rg
http://www.fulcrum.org
http://www.openhistory
And if you are jewish check out this one:
http://www.opensourcejudaism.com/
http://ww w.opensourcehaggadah.com/
But also third world countries will realise they have a lot to benefit from free accessible and free distributable content
http://www.openknowledge.net/
The United Nations has a big role to play in this.
Quality control anyone?
Distributed Proofreaders of Project gutenberg
http://www.pgdp.net/c/
http://www.comm ontext.org/
http://www.theassayer.org/
Another thing that is absolute fitted for open content are more complete reference works. Projects that take one item to its full-depth of general encyclopedias:
http://www.marxists.org/
http://www.hegel.net/
http://www.orditur-telas.com/pliny/
wikipedia has 150.000 articles from mixed quality, but this in only 2 years. Imagine this project over 30 years.
Planetmath is an online community creating a Free Math-encyclopedia, this in reaction to what happened to Eric Weissteins World of Mathematics that suddenly disappeared from the web.
HEML
It simply means, give Linus the credit he deserves
Exactly,but I don't take away credit from someone else, that is what YOU do. You are naïve in thinking that Torvalds is so much more important than Stallman in creating the Free Software Movement.
I don't care what GNU is.
There, you said it all: I don't care about GNU. I don't care about the DMCA.I don't care about Sklyarov. I don't care about Felten. I don't care about Lessig. I don't care about patents. I don't care about DRM. Just leave me alone.
And then it's Stallman that is self-centered? He is the one that makes *rational* arguments about it. Have you even bothered to read them? You're only playing ad hominem and carelessly showing off your ignorance. People like you make me realize what it must be like to be far ahead of your time, like Stallman obviously is. Sorry if that sounds insulting, it's not meant that way, really. The vision portrayed is the GNU-project goes *far* beyond "tools" or operating systems, or even software. I really hope that one day you can grasp that historical importance. I really, really do.
Just defending Stallman doesn't make me a troll.
but it was by sheer chance that the FSF's GNU project provided the tools.
Excuse me? GNU is a top-down re-implementation of UNIX. And Linux is a re-implementation of a UNIX-kernel. Bringing the two together is then considered a miracle??
FSF created a sauce, i could make my own sauce
Obviously, you've never visited the gnu-site, how can a sane person claim he can write all that software by himself? You are *heavily* underestimating that importance of the GNU-project.
Stallman isn't trolling, asking to call it GNU/Linux keeps stirring Slashdot and many other sites. Everyone's talking about it, and again some total newbies will have heard about GNU for the first time. It's a tactic, too.
Besides, it's not that hard to understand: Linux + GNU makes a working operating system. There's no arguing about that, is there? Linus can take the GNU-tools and call it Linux, FSF can take Linux and call it GNU. And guess what? It's the same system! Why call the thing with two different names, and refute the most simple compromise? At first it may sound a little strange to call or write "GNU/Linux", but is tcp/ip, Mercedes-Benz or Universal-Vivendi any different?
and just happened by chance to use the GNU tools in it.
by chance?? How can you say that?
and being of the opinion that his creation should be freely available...
He just used the GPL-license. Otherwise, there would have been the requirement that it's just for non-commercial use. So goodbye Red Hat, IBM and all others.
If Linus wants to call his creation Linux, then I'll call it Linux.
Sure, I call the kernel "Linux" too, but you've just stated yourself that that Linus didn't create anything more than just a kernel. Torvalds does not make the distinction between the kernel and the whole operating system.
Linus accidently completed the GNU-Project, thus making it a succes.Where do you get the idea of failure?
Imagine you want the build a hotel, you build it gradually brick by brick, but everyone calls you a loser. But you build it further brick by brick, you create the fundaments to nobody sees, then you continue building floor by floor, but still everyone calls you a failure because is's not finished, it still needs an elevator inside. At the same time the someone else is having fun making an elevator. "Whaw, nice elevator, now i'm looking for a building to put it in."
You say: "whauw, my/our hotel is finished" but still everyone calls you a failure, because it's not your elevator.
What should the name of the hotel be?
You: "I call it the Pong-hotel, because of my chinese fore-fathers"
. Elevator-guy: "I call my elevator "Ping", because of the sound an elevator makes when the doors go open. So it the "Ping-hotel."
You: let's be nice, let's make a deal, let's call it the Ping-Pong-hotel.
Because Linus succeeded where GNU failed Hmm, GNU succeeded where Linus never started: they wrote a compiler, they wrote a text-editor, they wrote a shell... Maybe we should call the "Linux Operating System" a failure: they never got any further than a kernel.