Jul 27, 2010 9:51pm GMT
Ordinarily, a change in website design doesn't rate a mention these days. However, the recent change in the Free Software Foundation's (FSF) home page is an exception. It marks not just a change in aesthetics, but of organizational direction as well. Instead of being directed at the free software community, the site is now intended as an introduction to free software and the social and politica... more »
Ebooks outselling hard covers? Where's the news?Jul 23, 2010 1:11am GMT
Just by choosing which stories to cover, journalists and editors decide what is news and what is not. Since you can never cover everything, that is inevitable, and the alternative to being selective is to despair and cover nothing at all. But I despise news that is manufactured out of nothing or next to nothing. This week, for example, Amazon announced that it is selling an average of 143... more »
Recommendations from Women in Free Software: Too Mild for Its Own Good?Jul 20, 2010 4:37am GMT
The Free Software Foundation’s Women in Free Software has published its recommendations for encouraging women’s involvement in free software. I admit that I am curious to see what reactions it invokes – or, for that matter, whether it gets noticed at all outside of feminist circles.The analysis of Women in Free Software is not particularly new. It notes the barriers that many others, including... more »
The Reviewers' PerspectiveJun 30, 2010 3:17am GMT
This may be one of my blinding flashes of the obvious, but it occurs to me that I look at new applications from two perspectives. The first is that of any other user, looking for whether I might want to use the application. But the second is that of a potential reviewer -- that is, from the viewpoint of looking for a possible topic for an article that will intrigue me as I write. It suddenly oc... more »
You Say Linux, I Say GNU/LinuxJun 25, 2010 8:53am GMT
The older I get, the more certain I am that most discussions consist of arguing over half-truths. In fact, the more strongly everyone argues, the more likely that nobody has the complete truth. And nowhere does these hard-won truisms seem more accurate than in the age-old argument over whether the operating system we all live by should be called Linux or GNU/Linux. Yet that does not mean that y... more »
Norwegian Free Software Center Opposes Government Pro-FOSS PolicyJun 17, 2010 9:47pm GMT
If a government proposed a pro-free software policy, who would you expect to object? Probably, proprietary software companies and conservative business interests. But in Norway, among the first to object are members of the local Free Software Center. To say the least, their position raises several political issues for advocates of free and open source software (FOSS).I don't speak Norwegian, an... more »
Review: Amarok 2.3.1Jun 09, 2010 11:27pm GMT
Except maybe for Pysol and Battle of Wesnoth, Amarok is my favorite leisure application. In fact, I frequently use it while working to play songs that have no lyrics to detrain my thoughts. Not can I be the only one who rates Amarok highly; Amarok 2.3.1 was in the Debian Unstable repository within hours of being released (by contrast, KDE 3.4 took six or seven weeks). But, at any rate, my inte... more »
