Voluntary Software

[Lex]

Alex, do you believe that ideas can be owned?

Of course.  If Person A knows a secret that is valuable to Person B, then Person A can sell it to Person B.  Person B hacking into Person A's network to obtain this information for free would be theft.  Person A can require Person B to sign a Non-Disclosure Agreement as one of the conditions for the sale of information, and if Person B violates that agreement then Person A can have his pound of flesh, so to speak, but no one can do anything against Person C, D, and Z who obtained leaked copies without entering into an explicit NDA.  Once a secret is leaked, its value drops to pretty much zero.

You're desperately trying to wrap physical property rights over ideas and it's like putting lipstick on a pig. In the above scenario how do you determine who actually leaked the information? Since it is not possible to determine this then what is the point of even bothering with the silly ceremony of unenforceable contracts?

Just like contracts that enslave someone aren't really valid neither are contracts that claim to have control over thoughts and ideas.

There are so many bizarre and irrational problems that crop up when you try and argue for intellectual property, just a few off the top of my head:

1. First Inventor: if two people invent the same thing or write the same piece of code independently, which one of them owns it?
2. Who Took It: ideas don't have embedded chips that allow them to be tracked, so how do you determine who leaked or stole it?
3. Who Has It: without being able to cut peoples brains open and see for yourself or to hack into peoples computers, how do you know who has your intellectual property?
4. Claiming First Inventor: if someone takes your idea and you come after them, and they say that they invented it independent of you, what then?
5. Time limit: is your idea yours for a certain numbers of years since you invented it? or is it only yours while you're alive? what about if you're in a coma? or what if you get hit on the head and become mentally handicapped and can't even understand your own ideas? Do you still own the idea?

on and on and on.

Intellectual property is so ridiculous that only a government could have come up with it.

[Lex]

As I see it there are two options:

1. Keep it a secret.

2. Release it but be the first to market a product with it and/or also sell yourself as the expert consultant to others who want to use your ideas.

The open source movement has proven that you can write a lot of code, release it in the open, and people will still come to you as the expert in the technology and pay you lots of money. At the same time you get other people to add features and fix bugs in your code for free. And you'll get funding and donations from people who depend on your ideas in their business with the expectation that you will continue to improve it.

[Alex Libman]

You want to let government granted monopolies have their cake and eat it too. I don't.

No, I am fighting against government monopolies (that is a verbal redundancy, because no monopoly has ever existed in history without government force).  You and your appeasement of their violence is their best friend!

You dismiss the middle ground that can exist and point to your imagination as confirmation bias.

Sure, the middle ground can exist, at least for a while.  Like the middle ground Jews in the 1930s Germany chose by cooperating with the authorities and hoping for the best. Or a thousand other examples in history that worked out just as well.

Go slap a post-it note on your face with a license. I will laugh at you.

Um, you are the one who's arguing that a post-it note / readme file makes a valid license...

Perhaps you should wait until you sober up, make a strong batch of coffee, reread what I said, RTFM on the libertarian perspective against copyLEFT and "Net Neutrality", and try this debate again...

Without someone using the state to aggress against me no license is needed, so it doesn't need to have a functional value with out the state. That's a great license!

You remind me of a Russian revolutionary who says that after the Czar is overthrown the communists will give up all power and everyone will be dancing about in flower fields...

All licenses are socialistic. Even copyFREE licenses.

That would be the case if there was a simpler way to give away free software, but giving it away "as is" / without a license / "public domain" leads to a lot more complications.  All the WTFPL does is confirms that you can do anything.  All that BSD / MIT / ISC licenses do is protect the author from any "implied warranty" bull, and (since they've never been enforced as violently as GPL has been) they only mildly encourage a culture of giving credit where credit is due, an ethic that should equally apply to "public domain" as well.

Defense is the purpose of copyLEFT. I like the GPL v3.

That makes you a prime enemy of freedom as far as I'm concerned!

You need to understand that all effective commies evolve an instinct for gradualism.  All of the planks of the Socialist Party a century ago were implemented by other parties without anyone noticing.  The GPL license and its enforcement will continue to get more and more draconian as they are able to get away with it, that is as their non-GPL competition is destroyed.  GPL v4 might virally "attach itself" to compiler or Web server output.  GPL v5 might forbid for-profit use entirely and call for "public funding" of all software development.  Etc.

I'll only use it to counter-sue you in self-defense, if you try to sue me for distributing your software -- while you are distributing my software.

(1)  You might not get to decide who gets sued.


(2)  If your Orwellian-named FSF can sue, then so can RIAA, MPAA, BSA riding on its coattails.


(3)  Your "use my 'free' code and I'll crack / pirate your software" strategy would be pointless even in the 20th century, when most developer business models revolved around selling people floppy disks, because 100% of software was available as WaReZ anyway.  In an era of cloud computing, SaaS, and ad-supported freeware, it is completely and utterly insane!  How are you going to pirate Facebook or eBay?!


(EDIT:  I just noticed that a paragraph of text was sized 2px for some reason.  Weird WYSIWYG editor / Chromium bug?  Also, I'm not ignoring Lex Berezhny's last posts, I'll come back to them later.)

[thinkliberty]

You want to let government granted monopolies have their cake and eat it too. I don't.

No, I am fighting against government monopolies (that is a verbal redundancy, because no monopoly has ever existed in history without government force).  You and your appeasement of their violence is their best friend!

So we agree that cable and wireless providers have a monopoly granted by government force. You want to allow these companies to profit from their monopolies. I don't.

You dismiss the middle ground that can exist and point to your imagination as confirmation bias.

Sure, the middle ground can exist, at least for a while.  Like the middle ground Jews in the 1930s Germany chose by cooperating with the authorities and hoping for the best. Or a thousand other examples in history that worked out just as well.

So lets use the middle ground to end the government granted monopoly, this will be easier to do when they don't have as much money to buy politicos votes with lobbying. Instead of making it easy for them to take people's money with their monopoly.

This will make it easier for non-monopolies to compete.

Go slap a post-it note on your face with a license. I will laugh at you.

Um, you are the one who's arguing that a post-it note / readme file makes a valid license...

Perhaps you should wait until you sober up, make a strong batch of coffee, reread what I said, RTFM on the libertarian perspective against copyLEFT and "Net Neutrality", and try this debate again...

Ad hominem, you lose.

Without someone using the state to aggress against me no license is needed, so it doesn't need to have a functional value with out the state. That's a great license!

You remind me of a Russian revolutionary who says that after the Czar is overthrown the communists will give up all power and everyone will be dancing about in flower fields...

I don't think government granted monopolies will give up their power. I don't want to give them more.

All licenses are socialistic. Even copyFREE licenses.

That would be the case if there was a simpler way to give away free software, but giving it away "as is" / without a license / "public domain" leads to a lot more complications.  All the WTFPL does is confirms that you can do anything.  All that BSD / MIT / ISC licenses do is protect the author from any "implied warranty" bull, and (since they've never been enforced as violently as GPL has been) they only mildly encourage a culture of giving credit where credit is due, an ethic that should equally apply to "public domain" as well.

If you like the BSD type licenses good for you, use them.  I'll use the GPL.

Defense is the purpose of copyLEFT. I like the GPL v3.

That makes you a prime enemy of freedom as far as I'm concerned!

You need to understand that all effective commies evolve an instinct for gradualism.  All of the planks of the Socialist Party a century ago were implemented by other parties without anyone noticing.  The GPL license and its enforcement will continue to get more and more draconian as they are able to get away with it, that is as their non-GPL competition is destroyed.  GPL v4 might virally "attach itself" to compiler or Web server output.  GPL v5 might forbid for-profit use entirely and call for "public funding" of all software development.  Etc.

This is another slippery slop fallacy. You lose.

If the next version of the GPL becomes draconian I won't use it.

I'll only use it to counter-sue you in self-defense, if you try to sue me for distributing your software -- while you are distributing my software.

(1)  You might not get to decide who gets sued.


(2)  If your Orwellian-named FSF can sue, then so can RIAA, MPAA, BSA riding on its coattails.


(3)  Your "use my 'free' code and I'll crack / pirate your software" strategy would be pointless even in the 20th century, when most developer business models revolved around selling people floppy disks, because 100% of software was available as WaReZ anyway.  In an era of cloud computing, SaaS, and ad-supported freeware, it is completely and utterly insane!  How are you going to pirate Facebook or eBay?!

[/quote]

If the "orwellian"(lol) FSF trys to sue on my behalf I'll grant the person they are suing another license that doesn't allow the FSF to use the state to aggress against the user of my code.

If you don't like the GPL don't use it. I don't care.

[Alex Libman]

So we agree that cable and wireless providers have a monopoly granted by government force. You want to allow these companies to profit from their monopolies. I don't.

You are forgetting how those "monopolies" were created in the first place.  They were created by people like you, who wanted to use government force to solve problems created by government force.  With "net neutrality" you are creating a whole new generation of monopolies that my great-grandchildren might end up fighting against!  Your fantasy that it will reduce government power is completely baseless and dangerously naive!

I don't think government granted monopolies will give up their power. I don't want to give them more.

Giving monopolies more power is exactly what you're doing by supporting "net neutrality" and GPL!

If you like the BSD type licenses good for you, use them.  I'll use the GPL.

Yes, I've spent the better part of this year on the long, twilight struggle to free myself from restrictive software.  A lot of sacrifices have to be made.  Quiting proprietary software is a hundred times easier, and not quite so important because proprietary software isn't really harming anyone.

This is another slippery slop fallacy.  You lose.

How nice that you've made up your own rules that are completely detached from objective reality.  Why do you bother posting at all?  You can just proclaim yourself an infinite winner for life, and not have to debate anyone ever again!

If the next version of the GPL becomes draconian I won't use it.

GPL is a pandemic disease that you are helping spread today.  You may still be able to control the license of your own bits of code (which will require quite a bit of resistance to the growing peer pressure to hand over your copyright to an organization like the FSF), but they would be useless because they are entangled with the bits copyrighted by someone else.

If you don't like the GPL don't use it. I don't care.

Fine, just don't you dare call it "free software"!  You might want to change your alias to "thinksocialism" as well.

[thinkliberty]

So we agree that cable and wireless providers have a monopoly granted by government force. You want to allow these companies to profit from their monopolies. I don't.

You are forgetting how those "monopolies" were created in the first place.  They were created by people like you, who wanted to use government force to solve problems created by government force.  With "net neutrality" you are creating a whole new generation of monopolies that my great-grandchildren might end up fighting against!  Your fantasy that it will reduce government power is completely baseless and dangerously naive!

You are making up that I wanted to use government force to solve problems. I don't. I want to end government monopolies, you don't end government monopolies by giving a monopoly more power.

Your fantasy that giving government granted monopolies unlimited power, will reduce government and corporate power. It's completely baseless and dangerously naive!

If you don't want to be bound by the terms of net neutrality -- give up your government granted monopoly. It's simple.

I think companies that haven't been granted a monopoly by the government should be given an advantage in the market place, by being free to do what ever they want.

I want to cripple government granted monopolies.

I don't think government granted monopolies will give up their power. I don't want to give them more.

Giving monopolies more power is exactly what you're doing by supporting "net neutrality" and GPL!

I disagree how does the GPL give government granted monopolies more power?

If you like the BSD type licenses good for you, use them.  I'll use the GPL.

Yes, I've spent the better part of this year on the long, twilight struggle to free myself from restrictive software.  A lot of sacrifices have to be made.  Quiting proprietary software is a hundred times easier, and not quite so important because proprietary software isn't really harming anyone.

Good for you. I won't free you from the restrictions I put on my code, you can free yourself by not using it, if you don't like the restrictions.

This is another slippery slop fallacy.  You lose.

How nice that you've made up your own rules that are completely detached from objective reality.  Why do you bother posting at all?  You can just proclaim yourself an infinite winner for life, and not have to debate anyone ever again!

You lose in a debate when you try to use logical fallacies to back your position. Because they are illogical. If you are going to use logical fallacies why bother posting at all? You will lose.

If the next version of the GPL becomes draconian I won't use it.

GPL is a pandemic disease that you are helping spread today.  You may still be able to control the license of your own bits of code (which will require quite a bit of resistance to the growing peer pressure to hand over your copyright to an organization like the FSF), but they would be useless because they are entangled with the bits copyrighted by someone else.

I disagree the GPL is not a pandemic disease. It's a simple agreement that if you use my code I request that you share your code.

If you don't agree, then don't use my code.

If you use my code, I'll share your code.

I don't need the government to enforce my agreement. I'll do it myself.

If you don't like the GPL don't use it. I don't care.

Fine, just don't you dare call it "free software"!  You might want to change your alias to "thinksocialism" as well.

[/quote]

I'll call it free software, because it is free. You can change your alias to thinksocialism, if you like it. I don't.

[Alex Libman]

CopyFREE software news w/ views roundup, August 20th 2010:

• Google Chromium [WP] is in my opinion the most important copyFREE(ish) project that exists today, because it is unique, hyper-innovative, and has been the driving force of everything that is now in the process of liberating the modern Web-centric desktop from the forces of both copyRIGHT (i.e. Microsoft and Apple) as well as copyLEFT (i.e. Mozilla, GNOME, KDE, etc).  It is also a leading innovator in the field of online security, with new sandboxing techniques (including R&D like a new capability mode on FreeBSD), and gradually escalating rewards for bug bounties ($10,000 just paid out).  Its funding and development by Google is not without controversy, with a lot of people keeping an eye on the code to make sure there is no "Big Brother" activity going on behind the scenes, but the only things found so far have been understandable mistakes and false alarms (ex).  Unlike with GPL or EULA's, Google has no claim of any legitimate use of force against people who use their code downstream from them, so if they ever start misbehaving a freer fork will immediately emerge.
  
  Chromium has been developing at breakneck pace, while following the "release early, release often" philosophy at the same time.  It jumped up to version 7 release numbering on Tuesday, which includes hardware-accelerated graphics and other major performance improvements.  Version 7 should be considered "alpha"-quality, while version 6 had its status upgraded to "beta" a week earlier, which makes version 5 the "stable" version that most less adventurous people will want to use.  Those stable / beta / alpha numbers will shift by one and a new version 8 alpha will be released by the end of the year.  The latest versions available for copyFREE operating systems are: 6.0.495r56147 on FreeBSD to hybridsource.org subscribers, 5.0.375.125 via FreeBSD ports, and 5.0.359.0 on OpenBSD [OP].  There is no interest in porting Chromium to Haiku OS, due to their focus on GUI toolkit consistency, but many of the same technologies will eventually be imported into their WebPositive browser.

• Node.js [WP] version 0.2.0 has been released earlier today, incorporating Google's V8 JavaScript engine [WP] version 2.3.8.  It is an update and bug-fix to what seems to be the most successful copyFREE project utilizing the CommonJS [WP] standard, the long-overdue effort to standardize and enhance Server-Side JavaScript.
  
  Implementations of this poorly-named language (i.e. it has nothing to do with Java) have been called many things over the years (ex. ECMAScript, JScript, ActionScript, QtScript, TheScript, DMDScript, etc), and if taken together it would definitely be the most popular scripting language on earth, present in just about every modern Web browser since ~1996.  With competing implementations by Google, Apple, Microsoft, Opera, Mozilla (in both C and Java), KDE, Digital Mars, etc, JavaScript is the most "synergized", dependable, and free (as in choice) language there is - if one or two top projects go sour the rest will surely pick up the slack.  (You would only be able to say that about C/C++ and Java once there are stable modern copyFREE implementations, while both Clang and Harmony are still lacking.)  Being able to use it outside the Web-browser for tasks that are typically done with languages like PHP, Python, Perl, Lua, Tcl, AppleScript, Lisp, Java, VBA, etc would be a huge step for un-bloating the modern software stack, and simplifying programming tasks for everyone, newbies and experts alike.  (Remembering inconsistencies between various library wrappers is a major pain in the butt!)  JSON would also make a much more efficient alternative to XML.  I would even like to see UNIX shells, Makefiles, configuration files, etc all be based on JavaScript - one scripting language is all you need!

• The VIM (vi improved) text editor [WP] version 7.3, after two years of development, has finally been released.  Described as a "major" minor release ("minor" as opposed to 8.0), it includes a large amount of small changes / bug-fixes, support for Lua and Python 3 scripting (both copyFREE), Blowfish encryption (public domain), and persistent undo / redo.  I found that the move from Linux necessitated adding "set nocompatible" and "set backspace=2" to my vimrc.
  
  Love it or hate it, vim arguably remains the closest thing the copyFREE software stack has to a decent code editor (though if you use GTK anyway you might as well use SciTE [WP]), and if you're a serious UNIX user then you really need to know at least the basics of vi.  I personally question whether vim's "CharityWare" license [WP] qualifies as pure copyFREE, but clearly it's not copyLEFT either.  The intentions might be honorable (or not), but there are much more appropriate places to encourage people to donate to charity, like a Web-page or a regular text-file that isn't purported to be a legal document.  Licenses are not about giving the author his two minutes of microphone access to talk about whatever he wants, they are threats of violence backed by the guns of state!

• OpenBSD has turned 4.8-CURRENT last week, although the STABLE release won't occur until around October 19th (which, coincidentally, happens to be my birthday).  We all know that, come hell or high water, OpenBSD will put out a super-stable super-secure release - every 6 months, like clockwork.

• Yesterday's BSD Talk podcast featured an interview with Mike Larkin [MP3] [OGG].  Covered topics included ACPI and OpenBSD.  It's probably not the most interesting episode for people not trying to run OpenBSD on their laptops, but it's nice to know improvements are being made.  Although FreeBSD is by far the biggest copyFREE OS project, hardware support innovations often come from OpenBSD and other smaller projects as well, from where they can quickly diffuse to any *BSD OS, as well as Haiku, Linux, and most importantly - proprietary systems that can't accept GPL.

• Is competition more effective than "Net Neutrality"?  Eric Pfanner of The New York Times proposes a more libertarian and better way to keep the Net open and accessible.  The laissez-faire method has been shown effective all around the world.  "Consumers who are unhappy with their broadband -- if, for example, they suspect that their Internet use is not getting priority treatment -- can simply switch"!  No matter what Orwellian name they try to sell it under, government control of the Internet should be the greatest fear of every libertarian out there.  A very good example of what's to come has been revealed by RIAA lobbying for "Net Neutrality" legislation to include filtering!  They didn't even wait until the "bait" was passed to start pushing the "switch"!

• The copyLEFT lobby is perpetually looking for ways to expand its power as its market share increases, with too many recent examples for me to list them all.  Their legalistic aggression against Westinghouse [/.] has been a smashing success, which will further strengthen the "chilling effect" that copyLEFT software presently has over the IT industry.  The Linux Foundation, which owns the "intellectual" "property" "rights" to the popular kernel, has started an "Open Compliance Program" to help guide the GNU sheep toward the slaughterhouse on their own four hooves!

• As I predicted earlier, the copyLEFT lobby is now gradually beginning to push for government funding of "free software", starting with the area where their argument would be easiest.  In his recent interview with reddit (question #7), Stalinman said: "tax software can and should be released by the state".  All efforts to forestall this government expansion are spun as "lobbying" by "evil corporations".  In the same interview (question #11), Stalinman criticized libertarian and laissez-faire philosophies in favor of "liberalism" (meaning socialism).  He then expressed his support for "regulations", "consumer protection laws", unions, rent control, and abolishment of free trade!  Clearly government funding of tax software is just a snowflake compared to the avalanche that'll follow as the GNU movement gains ever-more political power!

• In the meantime, the various copyFREE projects seem to be very innovative in finding ways to fund their developer efforts.  Examples of this include: Time-limited Hybrid Source, code bounties (ex. DragonFly BSD, Haiku), contract work proposals / "reverse bounties" (ex. Haiku, NetBSD), BSD Fund's Visa card, CD and other merchandise sales (Free / PC / OpenBSD), and of course plain old individual project donations.  CopyFREE scripting languages like PHP and Python also seem to be the most marketable skills on sites like Freelancer.com [WP], vWorker.com (formerly called Rent-a-Coder / RAC), eLance.com [WP], oDesk  [WP], Guru.com [WP], BountySource.com [WP], and others.  In addition to obviously encouraging everyone reading this to use copyFREE software, I would also encourage everyone to look for ways to incorporate it into your business process - as an employer, employee, or both!

[Alex Libman]

An update on the above - anyone can download Chromium 7.0.502 r57001 for FreeBSD right now at chromium.hybridsource.org.

[Alex Libman]

The "Copyfree Software News Roundup" is back!

• The big news for the past month is obviously the release of FreeBSD version 8.2.  Changes in the core OS include improved Xen virtualization support, LZMA (7z) compression support in tar, stronger crypto, ZFS file system improvements (though that part is restrictively licensed and still far behind Solaris 11), a few new drivers, and bug-fixes.  New release package versions include: Gnome 2.32.1, KDE 4.5.5, Firefox 3.6.13, Gimp 2.6.11, Python 2.6.6, perl 5.12.3, PHP 5.3.5, Apache 2.2.17, and PostgreSQL 9.0.3.  The KDE-based distro of FreeBSD issued a simultaneous PC-BSD 8.2 release with improvements to the installation procedure (particularly partitioning and ZFS support).  The analogous Gnome-centric FreeBSD distro called GhostBSD v2 is still in beta.
  
  The most exciting FreeBSD features, however, are still being held back for version 9.  What might finally compel me to switch from "Copyfreer" OpenBSD is the addition of the permissively-licensed Clang/LLVM compiler infrastructure as a viable alternative to the restrictively-licensed GNUopoly of GCC.  The core system and many key ports (including Chromium) make it through the transition unharmed.  Another great addition will be the ability to finally run FreeBSD on Amazon's cloud framework, which should be stable by the time v9 is released (although, as with most platforms, NetBSD got there first).  Other v9 improvements will include: significant TCP/IP stack improvements, tickless (dynamic tick) mode, and other performance optimizations, as well as USB 3.0 support.  PC-BSD v9 will be the breakthrough release that finally moves away from just KDE and offers users a choice of any desktop environment, as well as better handling of PBI packages with pbi_add.  Progress is also being made in replacing (and eventually removing) the remaining GNU commands from the core system, most of which are rather trivial: cpio, ar, ranlib, bc, dc, find (the BSD version of that command is reaching feature parity with GNU), etc.  But be warned - the current alpha testing versions of 9 are still very unstable, and it's also slower than the production release will be due to the debugging compiler settings and other debugging-related overhead.

• For people sticking with OpenBSD, like myself, the biggest news of the month comes from the Hybrid Source mastermind Sprewell - Chromium 10.0.648 is now available on OpenBSD!  This is just the first compilation, so it's still very shaky, unstable, and slow, but it's a new beginning.  (The previous porting efforts seem to have stalled some time ago...)
  
  I believe -- and, heck, even Microsoft admits -- that HTML5 is the future, so bringing the world's most Copyfree modern Web client to the world's most Copyfree operating system and achieving optimal performance for this combination is very important work.  Of course there are other Copyfree WebKit-based browsers available for OpenBSD, like the minimalist surf, but those are not the kinds of browsers most people can live with on a day-to-day basis.  Chrome / Chromium offers everything that a modern client stack needs: innovative lightning-fast JavaScript, leading HTML5 feature support, a growing collection of extensions, blacklists and other security features, etc.  One innovative feature from Google that I really like is Native Client, which allows secure in-browser execution of x86 compiled code, and it seems to be picking up some momentum.  So, once again, huge kudos to Sprewell for his porting work, and I hope many stability and performance enhancements are yet to come!

• Chad Perrin, the superhero behind Copyfree.org, has been writing many interesting articles / blog posts on sites like Tech Republic, including: Code Reuse and Technological Advancement" (also: Licensing and the Singularity), "When 'Open Source' Software Isn't Truly Open Source", The Difference Between Secrecy and Privacy as Security Concepts" (mentions WikiLeaks), "Key Open Source Security Benefits", "How a Server Side Language Achieves Popularity", "A Skeptic's History of C++", and on pf [2], rssh, logwatch, sysctl, and burncd, among other topics.  Always a great read!

• The February TIOBE programming language popularity index reports remarkable gains for Python, which is still remains my favorite server-side scripting language, as it has been for a very long time.  Python is now at the #4 spot, behind only C/C++ and Java, leapfrogging PHP and making the PHB's who've made me code Perl instead of "that obscure snake language" a decade ago hang their heads in shame!  (Well, not really, and I doubt they'd remember.)  The current stable versions of Python are 2.7.1 and 3.2 (just released), but most UNIX distributions are still on 2.6.x (OpenBSD -stable is mostly still on 2.5.4, although later versions are available, and the most popular Web server OS CentOS is on 2.4.3).
  
  Python's Copyfree status remains imperfect, as is PHP's, but it's definitely Copyfree-er than Mono, Ruby, or Perl.  Not all of Python's components and packages share the same license, however, so a Copyfree purist (and anyone who just wants to avoid confusion and potential legal liabilities) will want to avoid modules like: Git, Paramiko, PyQt, PyGTK, wxPython, PyMedia, Plone, web2py, CubicWeb, SQLObject, Lupy, SimPy, PyMT, Conio, etc, etc, etc.  Be sure to check around and pay attention to licenses for every package you use - there are plenty of Copyfree alternatives available.

• The TIOBE index also shows Java further solidify its #1 spot in programming language popularity, and Java continues to improve in terms of performance as well, but the potential for a viable Copyfree Java stack is looking increasingly grim.  The one project on which I've placed all of my Java-related hopes for the past few years was Apache Harmony, even though it was being developed at a snail's pace, with FreeBSD support being rather lame and support for other BSD's non-existent.  Oracle obviously abandoned that project after acquiring Sun, and in October it was announced that IBM is disengaging from Harmony to back Oracle's restrictively-licensed Java stack instead, which leaves Google as Harmony's sole major backer.  Given the recent legalistic aggression used against it, Google would be wiser to focus its long-term plans on own technology stack, including Native Client and Go.  Now there's something called "IcedRobot" endeavoring "the GNUlization of Android" and moving things from Harmony to the GPL'ed OpenJDK.  So this is the time for Java programmers to strongly consider a plan to move on to something else...

• When jumping between exotic OS'es on bare hardware (i.e. not in virtualization), hardware compatibility becomes a major issue, and the biggest problem usually tends to be wireless connectivity.  Some operating systems support very few (if any) wireless adapters, especially if you need to use the newer 802.11n standard - even Linux and Solaris are often a pain in the butt, much less OS'es like *BSD, MINIX, Haiku, House, QNX, etc.  And the drivers that are present are often buggy, incomplete, offer limited encryption features, etc.  Fortunately all those problems have a simple hardware solution - use a "universal" wifi adapter like NetGear WNCE2001 (currently $59.44 if you search for it on Newegg or Amazon).
  
  This device connects to a standard Ethernet port and doesn't require your operating system to know anything about wireless - all configuration is done via a simple Web-based interface served by the device.  It will work with anything that has an Ethernet port - old computers without USB, Macs, video game consoles (you may need to hook it up to something with a Web browser first to configure it), DVR's, routers (use your old cheap wired hub to set up a wireless bridge), etc.  Ethernet also offers the possibility of using a much longer cable than USB, so you could more easily place it closer to a window, on a car roof, or wherever else the signal is best.  Plus you'll never have to worry about losing the driver CD and not being able to reconnect after reinstalling the OS, as often happens with Windows.  So if you're thinking about buying a USB wifi adapter, I would strongly recommend getting an Ethernet one instead.

• "Free Software Hero Attacked by Communist Fanatic" - that should have been the headline of this article covering Stalinman's bashing of Google Chrome OS.  And, needless to say, his site is still an endless torrent of calls for government violence - unions, taxes, regulations, luddism, government control of media...  Don't let the parts you agree with fool you - all tyrants initially claim to support "freedom", which they define as them being in control.  Sample quote: "evidence shows Obama's economic stimulus worked - and that right-wing budget cuts will cause disaster".  When you use GNU software and don't speak out against it, this is precisely the kind of philosophy you are endorsing!  Silence implies consent!

• Things not being covered include: BSD podcasts (no new episodes in all these months), DraglonFly's lousy benchmark performance (give it time), BSD Magazine (I can't stand PDF's), Haiku OS (things seem to have slowed down), PostgreSQL 9 (it's awesome, but I've been in a NoSQL mood lately), the OpenBSD backdoor allegations (they're FUD), and of course OpenBSD / AerieBSD failing my "culture test" (nobody's perfect).

And, in conclusion...  More Devilettes! 

[Alex Libman]

I'm always experimenting, and I'm running FreeBSD instead of OpenBSD at the moment.  The purpose of this rant is to say "bah, humbug" to the added benefits that FreeBSD claims to offer.


Performance

FreeBSD is faster based on the default settings, since OpenBSD is fanatical about security and stability, but there are many things you can do to equalize the playing field.  I'm not saying that OpenBSD can be as fast as FreeBSD, but the gap isn't as wide as most people think.  Network performance, for example, can be significantly improved with some tweaking.  Other performance differences come as the result of memory management - you'll notice OpenBSD frees up as much memory as possible, which has certain security advantages.  Having to say NO to copyleft and proprietary code in the kernel did reduce OpenBSD's performance a bit, as did the focus on source code readability and simplicity.  And then there's proactive security, crypto, etc...

You must remember that CPU cycles are just a commodity, like the fuel efficiency of a car - Gentoo Linux is a Prius, Fedora is a Honda Civic, FreeBSD is a minivan with half a Honda Civic strapped to the roof, and properly set up OpenBSD is a Hummer with a 5 tons of missile launchers attached.  Sure, the latter is more expensive, but which would you rather drive?  :twisted:

So, yes, I would be willing to pay more for CPU to run a "Copyfreer" and more secure OS, and those added CPU cycles will also benefit the things where OpenBSD is just as fast.  Given enough CPU power, all things are possible - even lighting-fast Windows 7/8 with all the graphical bullshit running in virtualization on top of OpenBSD!

But one thing that isn't a commodity is security - once your secret data leaks, you're screwed for good!  Code auditing and security will become increasingly important as operating systems come to control things like home intrusion detection systems, self-driving cars, robots, medical devices, cyborg implants, holograms / virtualization suits that offer real physical stimulation (and could thus hurt the user if they malfunction), etc, etc, etc.

The Klingons don't care how fuel-efficient your starship is, but whether they can hack past your shields could be a matter of life and death!  :roll:


Alleged Desktop Advantages of FreeBSD

On my computer being able to use Nvidia graphics drivers offers a significant performance advantage in Windows and Linux, and that is also one of the advertised benefits of FreeBSD.  Unfortunately I can't seem to get the Nvidia drivers working right at the moment - they cause flickering and some other weirdness in X.  I've spent over an hour trying various compilation and xorg.conf settings, then gave up.  Being banned from the official FreeBSD forum sucks ass, and even if I wasn't banned the fact that it's run my such total fascist assholes is a major turn-off from using FreeBSD.  Once again, if you have enough CPU power you don't really need GPU, and GPU is just a waste of money if you don't waste your time on games.

FreeBSD's Adobe Flash support is another benefit and it works fine, but it requires Linux virtualization and a fuckload of Linux components, which is also a major turn-off.  I think it's better to do without Flash, using work-arounds like youtube-dl (which can be integrated with an RSS-reading script to pre-download all your favorite channels), as well as certain browser plug-ins and Web-based features that convert Flash to HTML5.  Not having Flash most certainly makes things more secure!  And, once again, it's better to emulate / remote connect to a Windows machine if you really need to use a Flash feature, or any of the other things you can't do in a pure Copyfree software stack.

More Web browser choices (ex. native Opera) under FreeBSD is certainly a benefit, but much less so now that it looks like serious work will soon be done to stabilize Chromium under OpenBSD.  You only need one browser for surfing, and if you're doing Web design testing then you need access to a Windows box anyway, so you could also test under Internet Explorer (which looks like it's about to regain some market share thanks to the just released v9), real Silverlight, etc.


Server Virtualization

OpenBSD is alleged to have a very serious virtualization disadvantage, which is becoming increasingly important.  NetBSD's support for Amazon's EC2 just became official (though I was able to play with it many moons ago), and FreeBSD is getting there quickly as well.  But OpenBSD does run well on cloud providers that use full virtualization like VMware, and prices of real dedicated servers are dropping as well.  I think real servers are still a better solution, because security of virtualization is not bulletproof, and also because there are some freedom advantages to dealing with many small competing dedicated hosting providers (especially those that allow BitTorrent seedboxes) rather than mega-corp cloud giants that are more susceptible to government pressure.

Just compare the Basic package from ServerPronto ($69/month) to a Small EC2 instance using Amazon's calculator.   (Note that Amazon's Small instance gets you 0.2 GB more RAM, while the "1 compute unit" is "equivalent CPU capacity of a 1.0-1.2 GHz 2007 Opteron or 2007 Xeon processor", compared to AMD 2000+ you get from ServerPronto.)  You'll pay $62.22/month for the Amazon instance (or significantly less if you reserve the instance for a long period of time), but the 7 TB of transfer that ServerPronto includes for free would cost over $1000 with Amazon!  ServerPronto does charge an even more ridiculous $0.89/GB if you go over the 7 TB, so it could actually be more expensive if you overblow your limit significantly, but very few sites would need that much bandwidth and there are many things you can do to offload extra bandwidth to a cheaper host if you ever get close to the limit.

Amazon's data transfer (especially if you use CloudFront) is certainly faster than ServerPronto, but I think the best way to host a site is to mainly use static files, so you could use one "processing server" (ideally hosted in your home if there are no bandwidth constraints, or using something like ServerPronto) and to have multiple mirrors on cheap shared hosts in different countries.  For example, this forum could have all the threads as static HTML files, which would load more quickly, and the comparatively rare occasion where someone posts would trigger a server-side script to regenerate the thread HTML file and push it to all the mirrors.  Use of richer client-side technologies like AJAX can make this process a lot more effective and efficient.  You can use some server-side (ex. GeoIP) or client-side (ex. HTTP ping) tricks to route the user to the fastest mirror, or let them pick one manually.  You can also offer your larger downloads via Metalink and/or BitTorrent with HTTP seeds, which, given enough mirrors / seeders, can offer even faster performance than any single CDN, but more resilient and significantly cheaper!  And, of course having multiple mirrors in multiple countries is also the most effective anti-censorship precaution - never forget how Amazon gave WikiLeaks the boot!


Summation

FreeBSD's advantages over OpenBSD are rather shallow.  OpenBSD's supposed limitations actually encourage you to do thing right - invest in CPU power, use scripting, avoid cloud giants, avoid Web server inefficiencies, avoid GNUshit, maintain a rational attitude toward Microsoft, etc.

[CurtHowland]

"Net Neutrality" is an Orwellian-named government power-grab

Net neutrality keeps government granted monopolies from turning the internet in to a corporate power-grab, with protection from the state.

As much as it pains me to agree with anything Libman says, "Net Neutrality" is no more an honest name than the "Patriot Act".

Will Net Neutrality Save the Internet?

[CurtHowland]

Fact: Cable and phone companies that provide internet have a monopoly granted to them by the local government. They were given federal government money to create those networks. Wireless providers have a national monopoly on the frequency they use to provide the internet.

Solving a problem created by govt intervention with more govt intervention is "The Road To Serfdom".

The only real solution to the problem is to attack the root cause, the govt granted monopolies.

Start locally. Go to your town and demand that all govt granted monopolies be repealed. Then your county, then your state.

The town that I live in now provides electricity as a city utility. It is the only place that I have HAD to keep candles and a flashlight available at all times, because it is the most unreliable electricity service I've had, in 10 states and two countries, not counting different municipalities.

This is also the only city electric service. The rest were monopolies, but they were at least private monopolies.

[Alex Libman]

As much as it pains me to agree with anything Libman says  [...]

C'mon, I'm not a pariah.  We probably agree on a lot more issues than we disagree.   

[Alex Libman]

R.I.P. Michael S. Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg...





From the Copyfree.org mailing list, by Chad Perrin:

The Inventor of the Digital Age Michael S. Hart passed away on 6 September 2011.  He was the guy who first saw the need and opportunity for widespread, easily accessible ebook distribution and did something about it.  He founded Project Gutenberg, and he's suddenly springing from relative obscurity into some  kind of Internet fame thanks to the reverent obituaries appearing in the wake of his passing. At Mises.org, by Jeffrey A. Tucker:     The Inventor of the Digital Age     http://mises.org/daily/5650/The-Inventor-of-the-Digital-Age At Open Enterprise, by Glyn Moody:     Michael Hart (1947 - 2011): Prophet of Abundance     http://tinyurl.com/3jeco3x There are sure to be more out there.  These are the examples I've noticed so far, and I haven't even really been looking.

May his values and achievements
always be a part of our civilization,
and may his name be remembered...

[CurtHowland]

A giant has passed. :^(