Linux Will Save The World
And then the spell wears off, and I realize Orwell was a prophet, the commercial bears no relationship to the product, and the athlete's Apple shirt should have a penguin logo on it instead of the Macintosh logo.
Free As In Entitled
Sometimes I feel like a dinosaur, and me and my fellow dinosaurs are moving towards extinction, because we place supreme importance on freedom. But we seem to be a dwindling minority. You know what stories perform the worst on Linux Today? Anything that pertains to freedom- software freedom, the GNU Foundation, the Software Freedom Law Center, civil rights, and law. Technology is front and center on the big issues of the day. If we didn't have FOSS we would be in an even worse mess as a society, because then technology would all be centralized and controlled by a very few people who have proven their hostility to civil liberties, privacy, and basic decency.I don't believe it is exaggerating to say that Linux/FOSS is all that stands between technology tyranny, corporate tyranny, and the hope of something better. Who else is keeping up the pressure for openness and accountability in the tech industry? Plus access to public data, open document formats and industry standards, an open Internet, openness in government... it is true that my memory isn't what it used to be, but I do not recall Bill Gates, Scott McNealy, Steve Ballmer, Steve Jobs, Larry Ellison, Sergey Brin, Larry Page, or any of the other billionaire tech celebs emitting so much as a single word of concern for any of these, or performing any meaningful deeds. The forces massing against our personal freedoms are larger and stronger than ever, and all these fine masters of the universe can think about is yet more ways to fatten their fortunes.
Before anyone mentions "But they give lotsa stuff and things to charity!" please keep in mind that taking with one hand while giving with the other isn't charity, it's image polish. Success doesn't require exploitation, though that seems to be a minority viewpoint these days.
Maybe LT readers get enough of this elsewhere; I hope that is the case. Because I get real tired of the hordes of noobs who enter FOSS with attitudes of entitlement, and who make loud demands and complaints. I'm still not over the KDE4 debacle- what a shameful hyperbolic whine-fest. Is this the future of Linux, perfect free shiny toys for the spoiled? Increasing numbers of demanding, ungrateful users who think they are owed everything, and who give back nothing, not even courtesy?
Couple that with increased corporate control of Linux, and where does that leave us? It doesn't look much different than proprietary-land. Maybe I underestimate the power of FOSS to keep the suits honest. Maybe I'm wasting a perfectly good bout of pessimism. I very much hope so.
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Beautiful... Masterpiece... This article tells more than 1000 pictures... Thank you...
Linux may not save the world, but it will alter it. Not all at once, but gradually, subtlety. As T.S. Elliot might say, "Not with a bang but a whimper."
Let's hope we don't get too hard on the noobs .. it might help to remember that a lot of them could really be assessed a being deeply traumatised emotionally. After all most of them will have been forced to hand over lots of cash to upgrade their PC a few times as the anti-virus software etc.. made their machine slower with each definition update. They've probably done lots of re-installs too with all that CD-Key rubbish to hassle with.
Then a friend tells the noob about Linux and that friend is still recovering from the trauma of secret source Operating Systems and so is maybe a bit inclined to over praise the good of Linux as a response to the sheer relief of having found an alternative. So our noob has been set up for a let-down, perhaps.
Corporate control of Linux is still way less that the inroads being made into almost every other area of modern life. As the least "Corporatized" Linux seems to be the spearhead of a collaborative community blow-back by forming the proven example AND providing the essential communication infrastructure for everything from Open Source electric cars to Open Source Biotech!
And if the corporate influence gets too much, there'll always be the option to Fork, building on from the open code that those same corporatists helped to develop but which they can NOT lock away because the source code is out there.
I can't believe how many people have fallen for the "freedomz" stuff. It's just open source yet I have convinced people like Carla that having access to the code is a right. Is having the secret KFC chicken recipe a right as well?
As if 99.9% of the population can even do anything with source code.
Maybe the athlete's Apple shirt should have a penguin logo on it, but who would imagine 26 years later, the Big Brother should have an apple logo on his costume!
> Because I get real tired of the hordes of noobs who
> enter FOSS with attitudes of entitlement, and who
> make loud demands and complaints.
No-one asked them to start with their development, for a start. If they did, they have to take some responsibility and deal with any user demand and complain. It's the same to say that if government provides free medicines, they can be non-functional, and no-one shall complain because they are free.
Reminds me of Mozilla and OOOOOOOO.o guys who are not ashamed to advertise their products, but fail to fix the bugs for 5-10 years...
I'm a dinosaur, hear me ....ROARRRRR
The GPL license which is the base of Linux is a paradigm. A paradigm is like the low-level tremor of a distant and powerful earthquake. To hear or feel the earthquake coming, one has to pay attention, otherwise it just might bury your house and leave your world in shambles, maybe even kill you in the process. In such high-magnitude events, it takes a long time (in computer years) but Linux is definitely making its presence felt.
"And then the spell wears off, and I realize Orwell was a prophet, the commercial bears no relationship to the product, and the athlete's Apple shirt should have a penguin logo on it instead of the Macintosh logo."
You mean something like this?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lmbzVkZlzrc
Actually, the pieces on freedom are the first ones I read, so thank you for posting them. Without freedom, we wouldn't even have this country (I'm in the USA). But it seems that all it takes to get called a "radical" and an "extremist" nowadays is to simply repeat the words of the Founding Fathers of our country, words like these
"Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!"
I also happen to be a strong Second Amendment supporter. So why would someone who does that support Free Software and digital freedom as well? Why, for the same reason--it's about freedom! The Founding Fathers were very wise to put in the Constitutional safeguards that they did. Our defensive "firearms" in the digital arena are Free Software and truly Open Standards. Without these in our "arsenal", Carla's assertion of the following:
"Technology is front and center on the big issues of the day. If we didn't have FOSS we would be in an even worse mess as a society, because then technology would all be centralized and controlled by a very few people who have proven their hostility to civil liberties, privacy, and basic decency."
would become all too true.
NO. Not as long as I draw breath. Not as long as Ken "Helios" Starks, Richard Stallman, Eben Moglen, Larry Cafiero, Eric Harrison, Carla, and so many others like them draw breath.
--TP
Thank you, Carla. Freedom needs people like you.
You rock, Carla. Keep the freedom coming so it's there when your readers are ready to absorb it.