October 18th 2007
I love the new project that’s being organized by Libervis and The Tux Project: Freedomware Gamefest 2007. This is something that definitely deserves notoriety, so I’m doing my bit by adding a badge on my website. The funny part of the story is that I don’t like computer games 
, but the project really worths it.
September 6th 2007
I’ve been using an Intel graphic card because its free drivers are developed by the company itself, but this time AMD/ATI is going further: They’re not only going to develop free drivers (along with the community), but they’re also going to release the documentation for their devices. No more vendor lock-in! At least from ATI.
Intel, can you beat this?
August 27th 2007
Explaining what freedom in computing is about, is also talk about the FSF and/or the GNU project; they’re nothing less than the flagship of the free software movement and they’ve made huge steps toward freedom in computing, but they have missed a key point: If the average computer user is not on our side, we’ll get nowhere.
Ours is a wonderful, well-founded philosophy, just like many others. So why would a friend of mine try to find out what yet another philosophy is all about? After all, there are many things that hurt societies and everyone doesn’t have enough time to support/learn about everything that’s going wrong nor how to solve it. Therefore, our most important concern must be how to approach people.
Getting people’s attention is even more important than trying to develop a free BIOS or a free flash player. The industry offers technology and people accept/reject it, this is how things work and this is why having people on our side is the way to go (instead of begging the industry for mercy). There would be no need to develop a free alternative to the Google Earth client in a Free Software-aware society, for example.
What’s worst, the Free Software Foundation doesn’t even seem to have a plan to solve this situation, after 23 years spreading the word about Freedom-respectful software: GNU.org is supposed to be the main resource on Free Software, but it is not aimed at everyday computer users. Let’s have a look at GNU.org:
What is the GNU project? The GNU Project was launched in 1984 to develop a complete Unix-like operating system which is free software: the GNU system. Variants of the GNU operating system, which use the kernel called Linux, are now widely used; though these systems are often referred to as “Linux”, they are more accurately called GNU/Linux systems. GNU is a recursive acronym for “GNU’s Not Unix”; it is pronounced guh-noo, approximately like canoe.
It’s definitely not the place I’d recommend my friends to learn about Free Software, as you only get one chance to make a first impression and I wouldn’t waste it that way.
I’ve talked with Stallman about this and he knows they haven’t been approaching everyday computer users the right way (he told me many people say that it’s not easy to know how to make the switch by following GNU.org and they wanted to change that). Anyways, redesigning the whole GNU.org website wouldn’t be enough, as there are other features of the FSF that make it harder to have the average computer user on our side:
However, it’s very unlikely that the FSF is going to change and I understand their position and their crucial role in the free software movement, so I’ll keep supporting them. But then, a fork organization is urgently required to meet the need for an effective advocacy for Freedom-respectful software among everyday computing users and this is why GNU/Linux Matters exists.
PS: This blog post’s aim is not to blame the FSF and promote GLM, but to express how disappointed I’m in the poor effort to spread the word about free software on behalf of the Free Software Foundation.
PPS: This blog post does not represent the position of GNU/Linux Matters, just like the rest of the website.
August 27th 2007
Free Software purists spend/waste a lot of time explaining why GNU/Linux is the right name for the operating system and why just “Linux” is wrong, so these are my thoughts…
Alright, if I use the GNU operating system with Linux running as its kernel, then I’d be using GNU/Linux. But wait a second! Isn’t KDE or Gnome one of the most important parts of my system? After all, I wouldn’t use my computer with the command line interface. Also, out of all of the applications I use, how many of them are KDE-based or Gnome-based? Much more than those applications from the GNU project.
So, my desktop environment also deserves to be appended to the name of the system I use and therefore I’m actually using GNU/Linux/KDE. Although… If they say GNU/Linux instead of Linux because the kernel without GNU is useless, then I shouldn’t just append my desktop environment but also its widget toolkit, so I’m afraid the right name of the system I use is GNU/Linux/Qt/KDE. And now I wonder whether I should also append the X Windows System.
This is a mess and I think there are many more important things to do instead of trying to find out what’s the accurate name of my system (I just care about it being freedom-respectful). To sum up, GNU is the base of the operating system and thus my operating system should be called just “GNU”, but it’s unfortunately best known as “Linux” (which is not that bad, after all, it’s the core of the base sub-system)… Also, a drawback of using GNU is that it’s an acronym, which would lead to a hard-to-remember name for a highly important operating system (what’s its name? GUN? UNG? NGU?), specially for non-English speaking people (who won’t remember what GNU stands for).
For the above reasons Linux has always worked, while I’d still prefer to refer to it as GNU (although I often use GNU/Linux to avoid ambiguity). In the end, the name is not so important to me, as long as it isn’t ambiguous.
August 2nd 2007
July 23rd 2007
While English is the de facto language for technical documentation, it’s a headache when it comes to using the two key words of the free software philosophy: Free and non-free. I mean, to explain what free software is all about, we should also explain what we mean by “free”.
This is so true, that English-speaking people had to borrow a word from another language to work around this ambiguity. Now the “Free as in Freedom, not as free beer” issue is resolved by using a single word: Libre. But, what’s the antonym of Libre? Non-libre? No, it’s non-free or proprietary! (non-libre is seldom used); what a muddle.
Also, both “non-free” and “proprietary” miss the point, just like open-source does in a similar sense; on one hand, “non-free” means that something is not free (yes, I’m a genius!), so we’re back to the starting point, as we have to explain what we mean by “non-free” (a non-gratis-bear or a non-libre-person?) and “non-free” is not an strong term; on the other hand, “proprietary” means that something has one or more owners, that’s it. We need an strong, offending term.
What about “Freedom-depriving software”? It’s the perfect term to refer to software like Microsoft’s. It’s not ambiguous in English, it’s simple and it’s offending (just what they deserve). We can say “Windows is a Freedom-depriving software” and everyday computer users will get what we mean.
PS: English already has a word that perfectly defines the contrary of “Free as in Freedom”: Privative. But people may argue that this is the worst solution because “privative” is an unusual word… And that would be a valid point.
July 18th 2007
According to Wikipedia, human rights are:
the basic rights and freedoms to which all humans are entitled, often held to include the right to life and liberty, freedom of thought and expression, and equality before the law.
On the other hand, Wiktionary defines Liberty as:
The condition of being free from control or restrictions.
So, it is obvious that a free computing environment is a human right, an undeclared one. Then, it must be illegal for someone to forbid others from:
It is not enough to have free alternatives: These constraints must not exist; nothing justifies them.
Software products have a key difference from other products: They can be copied almost instantaneously and its cost tends to zero. This is where the real problem begins: Many software vendors have been using typical commercial strategies in order to make a profit from an unprecedented product type.
These vendors must look for other ways of making money, without depriving their clients of their freedom in their computing environment. But they won’t, so we must stand for a free society and let our governments know that this is an undeclared human right.
July 6th 2007
Well, it looks like I finally got a blog!
I will use it to talk about what’s going on behind-the-scenes with my contributions to the free software movement, mainly by means of GNU/Linux Matters. I want to let people know that we’re alive! That behind those cool but static websites there are people moving forward, getting ready to effectively defend Freedom in computing. Yes, we already have a blog, but I believe that a personal touch would be great as well. I look forward to seeing more people at GLM blogging about what’s happening under the hood.
But that’s not it. I’m studying computing, so you might think that I’ll blog about computing-related stuff; if so, you’re right. I love software and I wish I could only care about it, without worrying about whether it’s free or not… Every single piece of software must be free as in Freedom. Unfortunately, in the real world, most computing systems are powered by privative software.
I hope you enjoy it!
PS: You might wonder what’s “privative software”. I’ll explain it later, but in the mean time you can read dylunio’s brief explanation.
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