Older blog entries for mpawlo (starting at number 22)

Rusty: You really shoudl seize the opportunity and only open K5 to paying subscribers. You will never get a better chance than this to make your work worthwhile. I am reluctant to pay to participate, nevertheless I would do it just to access K5 now. We are all starving .-)

Jonas: I sent you some interview questions for Gnuheter. I hope you can find the time answering them.

Mikael

SuSEs mailinglists are running amok. I guess all subscribers have noticed by now. The problem is still not solved, though.

Some more informatin from Roman Drahtmüller:

Hello Shane,

it looks like somebody at savoixmagazine.com has put a few mailing lists from SuSE (like for example the security main contact address security@suse.com through which I received the email) to their distribution list. Headers are cut at LatestIssue@savoixmagazine.com but remaining content is not changed. Forwarding happens through envelope-rewriting/requeueing.

In the meanwhile, I try to remove that address from suse mailing lists. Apart from the postmaster at apollohosting.com, there is not much that I can do against this spam. If it continues, I will try to reach Apollo Hosting later today.

Todays advocacy:
Wrote a reply to Nicklas Lundblad regarding his views on free software and open source. I do not know if Pontus of Vision will publish it and I had to keep the reply painfully short.

Corruptor: What you need is Daniel "The Leader" Kahlin's excellent software Over5.

"Over5 is a c64/vic20 < - > Amiga/Pc/Unix-box transferring program. It supports serial transfer at 38400 bps using only a RS-232 level converter (like the VIC-1011A RS232C or the Handic V24 interface) and a 3-line standard nullmodem cable. NO special serialport chips needed!"

Jonas: Sure, we can discuss FSF Europe issues. Just send me an email.

As reported by Gnuheter, a new essay published by Bradley M Kuhn och Richard M Stallman carries the title "Freedom or Power?". The authors state something that we might have suspected from essays from Kuhn and Stallman before, but now is a little more clear, if still ambiguous:

"However, one so-called freedom that we do not advocate is the "freedom to choose any license you want for software you write". We reject this because it is really a form of power, not a freedom."

The essay is interesting in the light of an earlier essay published by Eric S Raymond. Raymond states:

"In other words, Stallman and Kuhn want to be able to make decisions that affect other developers more than themselves. By the definition they themselves have proposed, they want power".

Tim O'Reilly started the debate with his weblog of July 28, 2001: My definition of freedom zero, where O'Reilly states:

"If Freedom Zero for developers is the freedom to offer software on whatever terms the developer sets and a user will accept; Freedom Zero for users is the right to choose whatever software they like, without interference from platform vendors who try to deny that choice."

The issue is not simple. Stallman and Kuhn could be attacked on liberal grounds and even more so on libertarian grounds. This notwithstanding, you probably find a point in their statement:

"We believe you should decide what to do with the software you use; however, that is not what today's law says. Current copyright law places us in the position of power over users of our code, whether we like it or not. The ethical response to this situation is to proclaim freedom for each user, just as the Bill of Rights was supposed to exercise government power by guaranteeing each citizen's freedoms. That is what the GNU GPL is for: it puts you in control of your usage of the software, while protecting you from others who would like to take control of your decisions."

I am not sure whether Raymond, Stallman or O'Reilly is right, but to paraphrase Esther Dyson: the conversation continues.

Congratulations Jonas!

The obnoxious Nicklas Lundblad of Stockholm Chamber of Commerce, wrote a reply to my article on free software and democracy stating that free software has nothing to do with democracy (only in Swedish). His reply will be published in Vision tomorrow, but we run it in Gnuheter tonight.

Well, that's about it.

Some advocacy today.

The Swedish weekly publication Vision published on of my articles today. It is a huge one (9000+ characters, two whole pages in the magazine). It was an article on free software, open source, the leaders and the bridges of New York. Very Berkmanish.

The article (only in Swedish).

A new Slashdot submission today, this time on Pawlo vs Bildt on the future of ICANN.

Slashdot advocacy today. Old stuff for Advogato readers, but it always takes some time for a piece to reach the Slashdot editors. By the way, the editors rejected my story on Osama Bert Laden instead of beeing first in the world running it. But I sure can understand that they had a hard time believing it .-)

Mikael

Wired ran an interesting piece by Russ Mitchell in the latest issue of the magazine. Mitchell focus on the so called war between Microsoft and Linux and why Linux will have a hard time winning such a war, and especially in respect of the desktops. The article was only available in the paper issue, but is now also available online.

Re ad the article.

As reported by Gnuheter, Richard M Stallman does not want to be associated with the open source movement. We all know that and now the editor of the Dr Dobbs Journal knows it too. Apparently, Dr Dobbs ran an article where Richard M Stallman was associated with open source. In an open letter, Stallman explains why this is utterly wrong:

If the House Un-American Activities Committee asked me, "Are you now or have you ever been a supporter of the open source movement," I could proudly and cheerfully say no. I've been campaigning since 1984 for *free software*-- free as in freedom.

Read the letter.