It's been a few years since the Free software, Turn based strategy game: The Battle for Wesnoth, made it's humble beginnings. Ever since then, little by little, not only has the code and game play been improving but the artwork has made huge leaps in quality.
So take a dive in the world of Wesnoth and see for yourself some of the best pieces of original/traditional art the Free software world has produced.
Read more »"...The method which finally worked was to download a prepared QEMU image and run GNU from QEMU. The image I used can be found here. [...] Now I'm up and running it's time to do some exploring. I will report back soon with my first impressions."
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After years of watching the software industry twist itself in knots trying to differentiate “open” vs. “free” and having to re-invent code simply because it had the wrong comments at the top, I think it’s time to put an end to the madness. This promoted me to write the following letter to Linus Torvalds, creator of the Linux kernel
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The Linux community and indeed the Open Source community in general is comprised of many different types of people. Their way of life, philosophy, age and location all vary widely with as many variations as the human face. However like the human face it can be categorized in a broad manner and stuffed into rather large boxes.
Read more »With 4.0's release, the technology of KDE4 isn't the only thing we find ourselves at the starting line of. As many of you have probably noticed, a theme for our KDE4 promotion campaigns was also unveiled using the slogan "Be Free".
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Sun Microsystems has purchased MySQL and released Java under the GPL. Chief executive Jonathan Schwartz has also speculated that there could be a future release of Solaris under the GPL, but what would be the implications of such a move?
Read more »Nortel CIO Steve Bandrowczak, who joined the Canadian telecoms and network equipment vendor last July, said "more and more CIOs are looking at Linux desktop for reasons of TCO" and argued that the technology "is receiving the same level of attention today as when Linux started on servers."
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Today sees the launch of the Cape Town Open Education Declaration which aims to make learning and teaching materials freely available online, to improve the quality of education in schools in South Africa and the rest of the world, leveraging the potential for open collaboration on the Web.
Read more »"...Stallman has a soft spot for India because he thinks people here are more inclined to free software — in fact, the first chapter of FSF outside the US was set up in this country — and because he sees similarities between India’s struggle against colonialism and the struggle against proprietary software. [...] He does not approve of what Linus Torvalds and Linux now stand for. [...] Stallman’s vision embraces larger concepts like human rights and ethical values, terms which make a lot of people uncomfortable..."
Read more »"Anyone who has ever learned to program in Lisp will tell you it is very different from any other programming language. It is different in lots of surprising ways- This comic book will let you find out how Lisp's unique design makes it so powerful!..."
Read more »"It is common to argue that intellectual property in the form of copyright and patent is necessary for the innovation and creation of ideas and inventions such as machines, drugs, computer software, books, music, literature and movies. In fact intellectual property is a government grant of a costly and dangerous private monopoly over ideas. We show through theory and example that intellectual monopoly is not necessary for innovation and as a practical matter is damaging to growth, prosperity and liberty."
It is an economic book that build a devastating case against patent and copyright laws.
Notes: It seem that book marks the GPL and other free software license as the exception and is something that they see as beneficial. It is something if possible they want to see preserved.
Read more »"IP addresses, string of numbers that identify computers on the Internet, should generally be regarded as personal information, the head of the European Union's group of data privacy regulators said Monday..."
Read more »Whether by wind, vibration, or shaky hand, we have all taken blurry photos. But in the digital era, there is no need to despair -- you can remove shake and blur from your pictures after the fact. Several Linux-friendly utilities can help you.
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"...Microsoft's proposal is for web developers to opt-in to Internet Explorer 8's standards mode by adding in a new meta tag (or HTTP header) [...] Microsoft are demanding that we web standards developers favour them with time, cost and effort, while they continue to abrogate their responsibilities to their half a billion clients. [...] Microsoft on the other hand are now expecting us web developers to carry the burden of their responsibility. Instead of Microsoft abiding by the responsibility of rendering pages according to the open defined standards, Microsoft are intent on making standards-based pages second class citizens. [...] We web developers should not be paying for Microsoft's mistakes.
Read more »Simply Give donation program has brought the first XO Laptop to Nepal. The lucky one is Prajesh Dulal. Jane Smith (USA) has contributed the laptop. Today he came to OLPC Nepal office for learning how to use this beautiful machine.
Read more »From 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).
About 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.
