After years of activism by local free software advocates, San Francisco, in particular, and California have both adopted policies requiring all government software purchases to include an evaluation of free software!
Read more »San Francisco Adopts Free Software Policy!
The Decade in DRM
Since the late 1990s, a handful of media and technology companies has waged war against the public, imposing digital restrictions on the technology we use. Here's a rundown of this decade's most important moments in the fight against DRM, and an important announcement: Day Against DRM 2010 is happening on May 4th!
Read more »Open letter to Google: free VP8, and use it on YouTub
With its purchase of the On2 video compression technology company having been completed on Wednesday February 16, 2010, Google now has the opportunity to make free video formats the standard, freeing the web from both Flash and the proprietary H.264 codec.
Read more »Good Artists Copy, Great Artists Steal
In 2003, after I unveiled a prototype Linux desktop called Project Looking Glass*, Steve called my office to let me know the graphical effects were “stepping all over Apple’s IP.” (IP = Intellectual Property = patents, trademarks and copyrights.) If we moved forward to commercialize it, “I’ll just sue you.” My response was simple.
Read more »The best way to fight viruses? stop using Windows
You can accuse Microsoft of many things but you can never accuse the company of being short on chutzpah.
Read more »When using open source makes you an enemy of the state
Guadamuz has done some digging and discovered that an influential lobby group is asking the US government to basically consider open source as the equivalent of piracy - or even worse.
Read more »Category: Opposition Tags:
European Parliament slams digital copyright treaty
By a remarkable vote of 633 to 13, the Parliament rebuked European negotiators who have been drafting the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) in a series of confidential meetings around the globe. No version of the document has been disclosed by the participants, which include the United States, the European Commission, Japan, and Canada.
Read more »5 Reasons You Should Be Scared of Apple
Let's just say it: Nobody has changed the way we interact with technology like Apple has over the last 10 years. Even if the iPad turns out to be the disaster that many are anticipating, Steve Jobs will still be seen as the hero who turns top-end technology into friendly little gadgets even your grandma can use.
Read more »Open Clip Art Library 2.0 released
The Open Clip Art Library team is proud to announce the
release of Open Clip Art Library 2.0. Open Clip Art Library now has over 26,000 original and remixed high quality scalable vector graphic (SVG) files that have been produced by over 1,200 creative artists!
Why RMS will not sign the Public Domain Manifesto
The Public Domain Manifesto has its heart in the right place as it objects to some of the unjust extensions of copyright power, so Richard Stallman wish he could support it. However, it falls far short of what is needed.
Read more »Category: Philosophy Tags:
Bypassing corporate firewall with reverse ssh port forwarding
Probably lots of you are behind some sort of very restrictive corporate firewall. Unable to access your office pc from home because of firewall policies. In normal cases this scenario is more than welcomed. No outsiders should be allowed to access internal parts of secure network!
Read more »Top 10 Addictive games on Linux
For millions of users who are hooked onto that square-rectangular box for most part of their day, passing time becomes almost imperative sometimes. And if the source of this entertainment is addictive enough, then we are definitely talking about Computer games and especially if the games are played on an Open source platform like that of Linux. You possibly have no reason to complain.
Read more »Category: End User Tags:
Tiny Core- A 10 MB Tiny Linux Desktop
Tiny Core Linux is a very small (10 MB) minimal Linux GUI Desktop. It is based on Linux 2.6 kernel, Busybox, Tiny X, and Fltk. The core runs entirely in ram and boots very quickly . Also offered is Micro Core a 6 MB image that is the console based engine of Tiny Core.
Read more »Category: End User Tags:
Ogg Theora vs. H.264: head to head comparisons
Streaming video websites like YouTube face growing pressure from consumers to provide support for native standards-based Web video playback. The HTML5 video element provides the necessary functionality to build robust Web media players without having to depend on proprietary plugins, but the browser vendors have not been able to build a consensus around a video codec.
Read more »Category: Industry Tags:
FOSS law journal is open to receive submissions
The International Free and Open Source Software Law Review is seeking submissions for publication in 2010 and beyond. Potential contributors can review the author guidelines, download article templates in
Read more »Category: Legal Tags:









