blogs : lxo : Blonging for Freedom

2009-09-21-linux-2.6.31-libre1.en

Tue Sep 22 02:50:25 2009

Oops. Linux-2.6.31-libre wouldn't build if you enabled the usbdux drivers in staging. Non-Free firmware name deblobbing error. Fixed in 2.6.31-libre1.

Aside from that, there are changes to the deblobbing of Radeon, R128 and MGA drivers, in preparation for the removal of the non-Free firmware from the drivers proper, and some improvements contributed by Trisquel's Rubén Rodríguez Pérez to make it easier to run the deblob scripts on a kernel that's already partially deblobbed, or for a different variant or base release.

Along with 2.6.31-libre1, 2.6.27.34-libre2 and 2.6.30.7-libre were released, and binary packages for Freed-ora 12 testing are underway.

http://linux-libre.fsfla.org/

Be Free!

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2009-09-18-sugar-labs.en

Tue Sep 22 02:10:52 2009

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Sugar Labs and FSF announce joint efforts to promote learning platform for children

Sugar Labs and Free Software Foundation Celebrate Software Freedom Day, Announce Joint Efforts to Promote the Sugar Learning Platform for Children Worldwide

CAMBRIDGE, MA, September 18, 2009 – Sugar Labs, nonprofit provider of the Sugar Learning Platform for children, and the Free Software Foundation (FSF), which promotes computer users' right to use, study, copy, modify, and redistribute computer programs, have announced joint efforts to collaborate and promote Sugar on the occasion of Software Freedom Day, September 19th. The FSF will host an event in Boston featuring Sugar Labs Executive Director Walter Bender, FSF president Richard Stallman, and other speakers. Peter Brown, FSF's executive director, said, "The Sugar Learning Platform is fast becoming an essential route to computer user freedom for children around the world. The international free software movement is getting behind Sugar, and we want to use Software Freedom Day as an opportunity to help draw community attention, developer resources, and external funders to the important work going on at Sugar Labs."

The FSF has upgraded its hosting services support of Sugar Labs to keep pace with its growth. As part of the ongoing relationship, Bernardo Innocenti, a member of the Sugar Labs Oversight Board, is working at the FSF offices. Mr. Innocenti stated: "The FSF and Sugar Labs are pursuing distinct, but interdependent goals; Free (as in Freedom) Software is a fundamental part of globally accessible education, and good education enables critical thought, a pre-requisite for appreciating the value of Freedom."

Sugar is a global project. Translated into 25 languages, it is used in classrooms in 40 countries by over 1 million children as part of the One Laptop per Child (OLPC) nonprofit program. Sugar's simple interface, built-in collaboration, and automatic backup through each student's Journal have been designed to interest young learners. The recently released Sugar on a Stick (SoaS) project brings Sugar to even more children, allowing young learners to keep a working copy of Sugar on a simple USB stick, ready to start up any PC or netbook with the child's environment and data. Pilot projects in schools with Sugar on a Stick are underway in Boston, Berlin, and elsewhere. SoaS is free software available under the General Public License (GPL) and is available for download without charge at sugarlabs.org.

According to Walter Bender, "Sugar is running on over 99% of all of the OLPC-XO laptops around the world because governments prefer its quality, openness, built-in collaboration, and easy localization to indigenous languages. Teachers and students are exercising their freedom by modifying and improving Sugar and its Activities. With Sugar on a Stick, access to Sugar is even more widespread."

For example, Uruguay has distributed a Sugar-equipped OLPC laptop to every student in the country. Alexandre Oliva of FSF's sister organisation Free Software Foundation Latin America (http://www.fsfla.org) said, "I was amazed when I first saw Sugar in action in Peru two years ago; shortly thereafter, my daughter tasted Sugar and loved it. She's going to elementary school next year, and I'm very happy she can now easily carry Sugar with her, and share it with her friends. Myself, I'm going to spread its freedom into as many schools as I can." Karsten Gerloff, President of Free Software Foundation Europe (http://fsfe.org), added: "Education and Free Software are both all about sharing knowledge. Through projects like Sugar, young people around the world can discover the creativity that freedom makes possible. Together with the political backing that FSFE's Edu-Team and others are building, Sugar puts Free Software in its rightful place in education."

Sugar Labs relies on the efforts of software developers who donate their skills to the project. Mr. Bender continued, "We are looking for developers with experience in GNU/Linux, Python and/or Gtk+ for contributing to the Sugar shell and educational Activities for children. We also need testers, experienced packagers, and educators willing to contribute their ideas for Sugar in the classroom."

Republished joint FSF and Sugar Labs press release, with permission.

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2009-09-12-linux-2.6.31-libre.en

Sat Sep 12 18:38:50 2009

Linux-libre 2.6.31 is available. Go get it at one of the mirrors listed at http://fsfla.org/selibre/linux-libre/

http://linux-libre.fsfla.org will be down tomorrow (2009-09-13), moving to a newer and faster machine. Thanks, FSF!

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2009-06-12-linux-2.6.30-libre.en

Sat Jun 13 00:19:28 2009

Wow, I didn't quite expect linux-2.6.30 to come out this week. I hadn't been able to get my hands onto the 2.6.30 rcs through the entire cycle, save for a few hours circa rc2 or so.

Lucky for me, on the 9th I got a time slot to fix a few deblobbing bugs in earler releases of Linux-libre, and when I was about done with it, Linus published 2.6.30. Turns out deblobbing a release is so much easier that deblobbing the rc patches. Thank you, Linus! :-)

Anyhow... With 2.6.30 out of the way, I guess I'll go back to trying to speed up deblob-check, and to back-port the gen3 deblobbing machinery to 2.6.26 and earlier.

But this will probably have to wait until I finish writing a couple articles, preparing and delivering one new speech and some GCC patches, all before the end of June.

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2009-05-11-isca-anzol-rede.en

Mon May 11 18:37:49 2009

The second issue of Revista Espírito Livre (Free Spirit Magazine), with the Portuguese version of the article The Bait, The Hook and The Wide Net, about the risks of computing in the cloud for schools of users, in a fishing allegory.

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2009-03-31-linux-2.6.29-libre.en

Tue Mar 31 21:48:01 2009

I've just uploaded the latest releases of Linux-libre: 2.6.29-libre, 2.6.28.9-libre2 and 2.6.28-libre2.

While at that, I've been kind of trying to get myself to microblog every now and then at indenti.ca, in case you want to keep up.

So blong...

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2009-03-06-copying-and-sharing-in-self-defense.en

Fri Mar 6 19:10:21 2009

Wow. Just wow!

Pavel Kharitonov tells me he translated the article "Copying and Sharing in Self Defense" to Russian!

Thanks, Pavel!

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2008-10-16-I-am-a-PC.en

Thu Oct 16 08:52:18 2008

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2008-08-11-linux-libre-and-freed-ora.en

Mon Aug 11 21:06:33 2008

Bruce Byfield asked me a number of questions about Fedora Freedom and Linux-libre back in mid July, for this article.

Oddly, he contacted me shortly after the longest thread ever started on fedora-list, and the article was published shortly before the threads spun out of it finally died.

Anyhow... The article seems to have triggered some interesting reactions in the Debian community, as well as the usual unsubstantiated FUD.

As for the Fedora discussions, a number of people seem to have got the impression that the entire thread was about the same topic. This couldn't be farther from the truth.

It started addressing the question of why Fedora fails to abide by the Guidelines for Free System Distributions, but flame bait quickly hijacked the thread into a long argument about the appropriateness of calling the combination of the GNU operating system with the Linux kernel GNU/Linux or GNU+Linux, which amounted to a large part of the thread and sub-threads. That part was further hijacked into a continuation of a one-month-before thread about the GPL on fedora-devel, and a some sub-threads went on to discuss differences between Open Source and Free Software movements, GPLv3, copyleft, and Free Software business models.

I like to collect posts in which I think I was fortunate in presenting the ideas, to be able to refer to them myself when similar situations arise. And then, it's also nice to be able to refer people to this list of postings, to get to some valuable bits without having to sift through several hundred messages.

On GNU+Linux naming, that I wrote about before, I'd like to highlight the exposure of the "Linux applications" fallacy, Linus' original take on it, the GNUdist olympics, the sub-thread a long rebuttal to the Linux-is-the-engine fallacy, particularly the reasoning that would lead to naming distros after GNU grub, and the sub-thread with subject creating an operating system with Linux but without GNU, not even autoconf stuff.

There are social reasons why this name matters to us; please help.

On differences between Open Source and Free Software movements, I'd like to highlight the differences in principles and strategy, summarized and expanded, and some of the attacks on us and contradictions.

On alleged restrictions established by the GPL, I'll highlight what a pure license is, discussion on conditioned permissions and the sub-thread Misunderstanding GPL's terms and conditions as restrictions, especially the translation of GPLv2's 2b "restriction".

On copyleft, I'll highlight the creation of "competing" copyleft licenses and their hamrful consequences, and the goals of copyleft, and the Short Strong Copyleft License.

On GPL compatibility, I'll highlight the practical issue with the original BSD license, and OpenBSD contradictions.

On GPLv3, I'll highlight its anti-DRM provisions.

This summary couldn't be complete without the apology. In fact, I'm sure it's not complete even with it. But it ought to be enough.

So blong,

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2008-07-21-gnu+linux.en

Mon Jul 21 20:03:01 2008

A number of people express this kind of reaction (quoted below) when reminded that Linux is a kernel, and that they're actually running the GNU operating system on top of it. Here's one possible response to it.

I really could not care less what it is called, just that the bleedin' thing works.

If you don't care, then wouldn't object to calling it GNU/Linux, right?

That's all some of the authors of a lot of the bleedin' thing you're running ask of you, to help extend to others the freedoms they worked hard to give you, by writing this very software, and laying the ground for the rest of it. Pretty please!

Please at least try to show some respect and gratitude for their efforts, and to let others make an informed decision about on whose side of the F/OS debate they are, if any, rather than inducing them to believe that this was all the result of the effort of the man who happened, just for fun, to cross the Finnish :-) line, after they had taken the baton nearly all the way, to give you and everyone freedom.

Please don't hide behind such poor excuses as "everyone else calls it Linux" or "Linux is shorter and more convenient". You're not everyone else (one would hope you're better than that), and GNU is actually shorter than Linux.

It took a lot of work to write all this GNU software, *far* more than writing Linux and porting all components of the GNU operating system but its kernel to run with it. Saying or writing GNU or GNU/Linux or GNU+Linux to refer to it is not even close to being as inconvenient as writing all of that software yourself, or not having the freedoms to run, study, adapt, share and improve, which these GNU people worked hard to provide you with.

Giving them the credit they deserve is the least you can do. Helping us reach more people, not only with the software, but also with the philosophy of freedom, would be a plus, and this is the reason we ask you to do so.

Please don't deny us the only thing we humbly ask of you.

Thanks,

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But what about the GPL?

At this point someone often comes back with theories that the GPL makes demands and imposes restrictions, and conclude from this failed understanding of the GPL that we do indeed ask more of you.

Please remember that the GPL doesn't take away any right that you had. It doesn't demand or even request anything. It grants permissions that are enough to respect your four essential freedoms with regard to a piece of software covered by it, while defending everyone else's same freedoms. If you find yourself in a situation in which you think the GPL prevents you from doing something, you're misunderstanding the GPL. The restrictions you might actually be under stem from copyright law and/or from other restrictions you accepted before.

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See also

• 2007-05-21-gnu+linux
• 2007-07-19-gnu+linux
• http://www.gnu.org/gnu/linux-and-gnu.html
• http://www.gnu.org/gnu/why-gnu-linux.html
• http://www.gnu.org/gnu/gnu-users-never-heard-of-gnu.html
• http://www.gnu.org/gnu/gnu-linux-faq.html

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