Document Freedom Day (DFD) is a global grassroots effort to promote and build awareness of the importance of free document formats in particular and open standards in general. If you have ever received a document from a friend that your software could not open, then you know the frustration of proprietary formats.
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Personal Politics of Stallman and Torvalds
So let's just accept that Linux geeks land on all points of the political spectrum and take a look at the personal politics and styles of the two godfathers of the open source movement: Linus Torvalds and Richard Stallman.
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The Linux Kernel Saves Animals, Gets New Logo
Tux, the Linux penguin mascot, will be taking a break during the Linux 2.6.29 kernel cycle. Committed to the Linus's kernel tree last night is a new temporary logo known as Tuz. Tuz is a Tasmanian Devil, which is a species in danger of becoming extinct.
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Ambivalence about free software in Latin America
"Just returning from the LibrePlanet 2009 conference, I had the opportunity to talk to some of the most hardcore software freedom advocates and see their reactions to the single largest regional implementation of free software in the real world anywhere on earth, in Latin America..."
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The politics of the command line
Software is an unlikely medium for social change, and an inauspicious starting point. Free software cannot produce vaccines or treat disease. Nor can it put a roof over an orphan's head or fill an empty stomach.
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Stallman: Free software Is Not About Saving Money
Companies turning to open source in the recession should know that free software is about much more, according to the GNU founder.
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Bruce Perens: Is Open Source Capitalist or Communist?
Is Open Source capitalist or communist? Yes. About once a week a certain blogger stridently claims Open Source is a Capitalist Movement! or Today, Open Source is Commercial! and Open Source is About Capitalism, Not Freebies! In fact, the truth is more complicated.
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Would You Use Linux If It Were Just Another Proprietary OS?
Several days ago, I wrote about the real reasons why I, and so many others, use Linux to an overwhelming response. One of the often-cited reasons for using Linux in my post that I dismissed is that it is open-source. Most people seemed to agree, but here is my question: If Linux was exactly as it is now, except it was proprietary and closed-source, would you still use it?
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Open source apps are no small free beer
Richard Stallman once wrote that the point about free software is it is "free as in freedom, not free as in beer", meaning that people should be at liberty to do as they pleased with software, rather than subscribe to its restrictive licences.
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Linux the cool factor part 3 - Freedom -
In the first part of this series of articles I stated some things about designers and their apple computers, I said that these machines are overpriced and overhyped. This made some people think this articles were about Linux vs Apple. I got a lot of comments from people who seem to like apple:-) and a lot of arguments, some probably valuable.
Apple
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From the End of the Beginning to the Beginning of the End
When Eric Raymond posted the first of the Halloween Documents in 1998, it marked the end of the beginning for open source. That is to say those documents demonstrated that the logical superiority of the open source development model had penetrated the most headstrong corporate skull in the proprietary software universe: Microsoft.
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The Losing Battle Against Technology Freedom
Even notice that you can hardly use a computer anymore without being in somebody's cross-hairs? Somebody, somewhere, is always out to get you. All we want to do is use these clever devices they keep making for us to buy, and be happy and not bother anybody. But somebody out there apparently didn't learn how to play nice with others.
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GNU is Not Unix, but it is 25
In the earliest days of computers, just about everything could be considered free software. Computers were so large, unwieldy and difficult to understand that any reasonably well-written program would be passed around via punch cards or paper tape. Into that free software world Richard Stallman was born.
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Developing FLOSS games: The only thing better than starting small is starting smaller
m64 talks about an idea for improving open source game development process: creating realistic aims through ultra-episodic game releases.
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Richard Stallman on ISP filtering and censorship
Interview with Richard Stallman (RMS) about censorship in Internet and undesirable IP addresses filtration by providers.
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