Tribalism is when one group of people start to think people from another group are "wrong by default". It's the great-granddaddy of racism and sexism. And the most dangerous kind of tribalism is completely invisible: it has nothing to do with someone's "birth tribe" and everything to do with their affiliations: where they work, which sports team they support, which linux distribution they love.

We’ve accepted the obvious benefits of open source principles in business and education, law and healthcare. In the Life channel, we get to examine some of the less-obvious avenues where open source is found--and here is one that even surprises us a little: open source religion.

It opens the door to the creation of private copyright police of the Net. All EU citizen can act to help the Members of the European Parliament out of the blind repressive path, and adopt an alternative resolution

I'm convinced that Linux needs to make greater use of tagging, but I'm also beginning to wonder if desktop Linux could abandon the hierarchical directory structure entirely.

As computers play an increasingly important role in the way we communicate, the people who control the software that runs on computers play an increasingly important role in determining what we can say, how we can say it, who we can say it to, and when we can say it. Control over technology is power. Free software is an attempt to say that this power should be wielded democratically.

Synopsis: Mimi makes a copy of a Beethoven Symphony with a giant copy machine. Trouble starts when Eunice erases Beethoven's name and writes in her own. This makes Eunice look like an ass. Searching the Internet (itself a giant copy machine) confirms that Eunice is a liar.

A few days ago, I had an epiphany. I, like many of my readers, have spent a good portion of my life advocating for libre software. There has always been a particular glow to the idealistic concept of information flowing through society, and to the possibility of adaptation to a particular context.

Sharing: Culture and the Economy in the Internet Age offers a counterpoint to the dominant view that file sharing is piracy, analyzing it rather as the modern form of long recognized rights to share in culture.
Go ahead. Take a copy