Short translation: Microsoft actually chose to pretend to be opening because it serves the company’s intention to run an extortion racket against its main competitor.
Read more »Microsoft-funded Analysts Firm Pretty Much Confirms Software Patent Pill is in ‘Openness’ Pledge
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End Software Patents (ESP) Project Formed to Eliminate Software Patents
"End Software Patents, a project working toward the elimination of software patents, was launched today. The ESP project will initially focus on two approaches: 1) assisting corporations that choose to challenge software patents in the courts and at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) on the basis that patents for software and designs with no physically innovative step have no legal validity, and 2) public education aimed at passing laws to protect software from patent law. [...] In a separate announcement today, ESP released its first report on the current state of software and business method patents. The report covers the economic impact of software patents, including the $11.4 billion that U.S. businesses waste each year on software patent litigation.
Read more »FSFE calls on Microsoft to release interoperability information without restrictions
"The European Commission has fined Microsoft 899 million Euro for anti-competitive behaviour by restricting access to interoperability information through unreasonable royalty payments prior to October 2007. This is in addition previous fines of 497 million Euro and 280 million Euro applied in the same investigation, resulting in a total penalty of 1.676 billion Euro.
«Microsoft is the last company that actively promotes the use of software patents to restrict interoperability. This kind of behaviour has no place in an Internet society where all components should connect seamlessly regardless of their origin,» says Georg Greve, president of the Free Software Foundation Europe.
Read more »How I Learned to Stop Killing Myself and Learn Vim
When I first started Linux, I fired up “Text Editor” and almost collapsed. What the hell was that? I like many Windows and Mac users, hit this bird on the first flyover of Linux. Now I could have used Open Office but I’m an old dog, and if I’m gonna be taught new tricks they better be damn good ones.
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Wikia open sources platform
Wikia has announced they are allowing their social networking platform to become open source. This will allow anyone to easily create a social community complete with profiles, avatars, friending, etc. ... within their MediaWiki-based wiki sites.
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Use Kaffeine to receive free-to-air TV on your Linux box
Free-to-air (FTA) ethnic television in a variety of languages beamed from satellite straight to your Linux PC? No problem -- here's how.
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Running GNU Mailman at home
GNU Mailman is the most popular free software mailing list manager, and probably the most configurable; however, it normally requires you have a web and mail server always connected to the Internet. With a little extra work, you can run Mailman from your intermittently-connected GNU/Linux desktop.
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Three alternative Linux instant messaging applications
Instant messaging helps us connect with people online in real time. Many Linux users IM with either Pidgin (formerly Gaim) or Kopete, two applications that handle multiple IM protocols. Here are three alternatives to the top names that each focus on one of the major IM protocols, and offer some pretty cool options.
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Simple Ubuntu Desktop Backup with Backerupper
Backerupper is a simple GUI utility program to make scheduled backups of specified directories over a network. It is not intended for full system backup, but just to make archive copies of a user’s personal data.
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How to publish photos to Flickr using KDE and KFlickr?
kFlickr is a standalone Flickr uploader for KDE. It allows for easy upload of photos with drag and drop from other applications (Konqueror).
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Wikipedia, Wikia and the Future of Free Culture
"Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipdia talks about how Wikipedia aims to give people access to the sum of human knowledge. He describes how Wikipedia is very popular across the globe. Hundreds of thousands of articles in numbers of languages. He notes how Wikipedia is a charitable organization with only 12 employees. Yet, look at the affect they have on the world. Spent $1,000,000 in 2006 - supported by small donations from people around the world. (Also gets donations of caching servers around the world.) Wales goes on to define, what he means by free access to the sum of human knowledge. “Free as in speech, not as in beer.” The Wikipedia’s license allows you the: Freedom to copy, Freedom to modify, Freedom to redistribute, Freedom to redistribute modified versions ..."
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MySQL's Disappearing Anti-Patent Page
MySQL no longer has a page about its (former) anti-software patent policy.
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Support Free Software? Then Ditch Proprietary IM
"There are a few things that I find ironic about most Free Software geeks. They’ll support the philosophy of GNU and Free Software until the cows come home, but they’ll continue to chat with their buddies over proprietary IM protocols, such as MSN, Yahoo!, AIM, ICQ, Gadu Gadu, Skype and more. Well, it’s time to ditch the legacy IM protocols in favor of Open Standards, such as IRC, XMPP/Jabber, SIP/SIMPLE and others..."
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Dr. Richard Stallman: the goals and philosophy of the Free Software Movement
"...The Free Software Foundation Europe, and the Royal Institute of Technology organized a lecture with Dr. Richard Stallman. Mainly the session was about the free software movement and the GNU/Linux operating system. Richard Stallman spoke about the goals and philosophy of the Free Software Movement, and the status and history of the GNU operating system, which in combination with the kernel Linux is now used by tens of millions of users world-wide..."
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Best Buy Sells Linux
Best Buy has started selling the Asus Eee Laptop to consumers on their website. The Asus Eee Laptop comes pre-bundled with the Xandros Linux operating system.
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Read contents from Free Software Magazine
Anybody up to writing good directory software?
Tue, 2007-02-20 11:17 — David JonathanFrom the very start, directories have served a very useful purpose on the Internet. (One I find useful for example is Free Web Directory). News sites can also be considered directories: they index and categorize news stories! What about categorizing software? In the open source world you get Savannah, SourceForge, Freshmeat; there are still, believe it or not, shareware and freeware directories like FileBuzz, PCWin Download Center and Freeware Downloads (although you need to be careful, as they are not like their free-as-in-freedom counterparts).
Is better education the key to finding better software?
Sat, 2007-03-03 03:25 — Edward RusselAbout Jonathon's article Anybody Up To Writing Good Directory Software?, it's clear that the topic of software directories is very hot. Most of what you find on Google, however, are not pointing to free and open soruce software -- or worse, they mix the two. Examples of such sites are Freeware Downloads and Shareware Download, which simply don't focus on "free as in freedom", and still can be used as good free software directories.








