FSF Debuts "Shared Source" Initiative

matty_x points to coverage at NewsForge of the Free Software Foundation's new 'Shared Source' program. Cynics might call this selling out, but it actually makes a lot of sense for the FSF to listen to customers about what they really would like and benefit from, rather than only to developers and freeloading users. Bravo!

Still the same date.,

[IdleTime]

Still the same date, eh?

Re:Still the same date.,

[frodo from middle ea]

Aw come on, I opened the article and saw GNU/HURD some where.
gotta be a April fools joke, what next Duke Nukem Forever released ?

Re:Still the same date.,

[The Bungi]

HAHAHAHA!!! The mods are getting into the spirit today! HAHAHAHAHAH!!! The first post on a story is modded +4, Insightful!!! HAHAHAHAHA!!! This is as hilarious as the RFC EVIL BIT!!!! HAHAHAHAH!!! April Fools!!!! Get it?? HAHAHAHAHA!!!!

Stop it, please, stop it!!! HAHAHAHAHAH!!!! *snort*

*Sigh*

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's the problem with April Fool's Day, this is one of those articles that makes you think "if only it were true." I guess the FSF getting a clue is too much to ask for.

Re:*Sigh*

[thizzlewit]

Shouldn't the moderation system be switched around on April Fools' day?

-1, Insightful, +1, Troll? :-)

alright already

[jon787]

Happy April Fools Day, but these stories are lame.

Re:alright already

[Loosewire]

yeah, at least reset everyones karma to negative - now thats a good joke :-)

Re:alright already

[jon787]

Invert karma, AC posts at +2, excellent karma posters start out at 0.......

That would be funny!

Re:alright already

[L7_]

it would be like goatse day on slashdot. ;0

Trolls modded up +1, informative posts modded -1.

Re:alright already

[Troll_Kamikaze]

these stories are lame.

Extremely. I haven't been fooled by any of these stories even for a few seconds. Failing in deception, they don't even particularly succed in being humorous.

Re:alright already

[bahwi]

You know, slashdot is a place for _links._ They are not responsible for all these stories. They don't make the news, they just report it. So yeah, for every place that does an April 1st Joke(Gentoo, CPAN, the RFC, Etc..) you will get a story. It's a fun holiday, let it be as such. I've read the slashdot summary and I quit reading the articles. I have better things to do, but it's good to see people celebrating. A party is a freaking party you know.

Tired of April 1st on Slashdot?

[product byproduct]

Take a break from Slashdot, and do your *income taxes*. That's what I'm doing, and I sure hope that when the IRS employee sees my fat check dated April 1st, he'll think "this gotta be a joke", and trash my submission entirely.

Re:Tired of April 1st on Slashdot?

[sakaruk]

Especially when you take into account that his version of taking a break from Slashdot involves actually posting a comment to the site...

Goddam! April fools day is over here!

[daliman]

All the April fools activity in New Zealand is over already... this is like having to live through the damn day twice, once locally and once over the net :-/

ABSOLUTELY!

[muzzmac]

Yeah. Feels like friggin' groundhog day here in Oz. Will it ever end?

There should be a rule against April Fools jokes that aren't clever.

Re:ABSOLUTELY!

[StArSkY]

Amen to that. I wean overclockers.com.au's april fools joke *NOTE SINGULAR* 24 hours ago was funny, but reading slashdot on April 2 and seeing them all is just LAME.

Time for a petition to get 1 april fools joke on /. ;)

Re:ABSOLUTELY!

[packeteer]

Im sorry but you guys are so lame you live in an area of the earth where you walk upside down. the blood must put too much pressure on your brains.

Move out of the sticks?

[daliman]

Nah, I'd miss all the sheep here ;-)

Yawn..

[Stormie]

None of the April Fools stories were funny on the 1st, and they're certainly not funny on the 2nd. Another humourless year from Slashdot..

Sad news, April Fools dead

[Anonymous Coward]

I just heard some sad news on talk radio - April Fools day was found dead in on the internet this morning. There weren't any more details yet. I'm sure we'll all miss it, even if you weren't a fan of it's work there's no denying it's contribution to lame slashdot stories. Truly an American icon.

Re:Sad news, April Fools dead

[inode_buddha]

April Fool's was found dead? Damn, must be a double-murder. If the body of *bsd wasn't found nearby, then I bet there's at least a few clues.
Hope it wasn't near my part of town, anyway.

April 1st on Slashdot Always Sucks

[MisterFancypants]

There is a reason why most places only post a single April Fools Day joke -- it isn't because they don't have enough material, it is because "trick" jokes only work in isolation. If everything you say/do/post is a joke, for the entire day, it is nothing but annoying, and any jokes that may have worked well on their own don't work at all because it becomes WAY TOO OBVIOUS when you have them all huddled together.

YES!

[Anonymous Coward]

They work better if you use less frequently.

Better idea for next year, don't do any april fools jokes. It would be funny to see the comments about the story being an obvious april fools joke, every whiner with out a since of humor bitching about how lame it is, etc.

Or did I just discribe what they have always been doing?

Wait a minute... WE HAVE BEEN TROLLED!

Re:April 1st on Slashdot Always Sucks

[pyrrho]

but some of the stories today were true.

Re:April 1st on Slashdot Always Sucks

[Ed Avis]

I like to think that Slashdot is subverting the April Fool's Day convention.

All I have to say about /. and April 1 is...

[Shadow Wrought]

All your fools are belong to us!

I mean, come on, as long as we're running everything into the ground, its all open game right?*

*In the interest of "staying on topic" I would like to just say that In Soviet Russia, Gnu Hurd tramples you!

oh stop it. !!

[cutecub]

Next you're going to tell me that Wil Wheaton is set to get a recurring role on "Enterprise".

Re:oh stop it. !!

[qute]

wow, that would be great :-)

HA

[Ken@WearableTech]

"GNU/FreeWindowsXP, which can be freely downloaded from GNU/Microsoft.com starting today for only $149" HAHAHAHA

Microsoft likes money and that makes them evil HA.

Seriously though, next year I think it would be funny if all the April 1st posts would be real.

Lameness filter encountered.

[frenetic3]

timothy, Your post violated the "articleposting" compression filter. Try less whitespace and/or less repetition. Post aborted.

:P

-fren

Get a grip

[CausticWindow]

Why is everybody complaining so much?

It's not like Slashdot has ever written their "stories" themselves, they just, like, report on other peoples stories. I mean, it's not like you're paying for reading this, after all.

And in all honesty, when could an "American" ever realize when enough is enough anyway?

Re:Get a grip

[DShard]

unfortunately some are.

Re:Get a grip

[Z4rd0Z]

Hahaha, that's a funny "American" joke. It's fun to be funny and make fun jokes, isn't it?

Re:Get a grip

[CausticWindow]

But it's not a joke?

Re:Get a grip

[Z4rd0Z]

Are you asking me? Is that what the question mark is for, or do you just not know how to use proper grammar?

Only One Possible Answer

[Ken@WearableTech]

The only April 1st post that I was looking for today was, "Hail To The King Baby. It's Done. Duke Nukem Forever is Shipping."

Re:Only One Possible Answer

[cliveholloway]

That's saved for next April 1st :)

.02

cLive ;_)

Obligatory Groundhog Day....

[Tsali]

"Excuse me miss... what's today?"

"February 2nd - Groundhog's Day!"

"It's still just once a year?"

RMS....

[hatrisc]

RMS would be mad at you for creating such a bad story. to think free software nazi RMS supporting shared source? i don't think so.

Re:RMS....

[hatrisc]

"nazi" ... ahh forget it. obviously you're intellect doesn't allow you to see joke context.

$50 million

[Fritz Benwalla]

"...gratefully accepted a $50 million check from Gates on behalf of the FSF"

I've given it a lot of thought, especially whilst wading through an endless parade of the most dweeby April Fools Jokes ever, and I've decided that I would sell out everything I hold precious for $50 million dollars.

Everything - I'd put my entire family, including my younger sister in a poorly-run nursing home, I'd go on Fox News, anything.

So I'm not sure I'm qualified to find this one all that funny.

------

Re:$50 million

[unicron]

Considering everything you own is worth approx $17.50, then that statement really isn't all that profound.

Re:$50 million

[Fritz Benwalla]

Not true, my younger sister is worth at least $300 an hour.

------

Re:$50 million

[outsider007]

is that the going rate these days for planting tulips?

What a disaster!

[Steven Blanchley]

This would be hard news to take on its own, but at the same time that BSD is dying and Apple is going out of business?! (Well, at least RFC 3514 [rfc-editor.org] will clear up a lot of security concerns, assuming anyone's still around to implement it.)

flashback

[Erris]

A smiling Bill Gates shook hands with Stallman in a conference room at the newly renamed Bill and Melinda Gates Center for Free Software, formerly known as the "Free Software Foundation office."

It reminds me of this [cnn.com] . Bill Gates had better watch out now, one of his fanboys might kill him and that will be the end of this "shared source" trial. Oh, I'd almost trade my freedom for the stability of free software but I know it can't be.

Rad!

[Michael Hunt]

Does this mean that next time I read the source to GCC, Bill Gates^W^W RMS owns my firstborn?

Re:Slashdot sucks on April 1

[Squidgee]

For once I have to agree with the troll.

See how bad it's gotten?!

The april fools joke of the day must be on me..

[FreshFunk510]

They must've upgraded hotmail with some of this new shared source stuff because my hotmail seems to be the april fools joke of the day.

Task 'Hotmail:Folder:Inbox Synchronizing headers.' reported error (0x800CCC19) :'A timeout occured while communicating with the server.'

LOL!!!

[Matt Ownby]

I found that article really quite amusing. Part of what made it so funny was that it sounded a lot like previous pro-shared source Microsoft'ish articles where MS tries to give the appearence of freedom while denying the power thereof.

*tap tap*

[gritz]

yeah right and grits are best served cold

Best April Fool's Joke ...

[slagdogg]

Slashdot was off this year ... surely bested by the daily gaim build ;)

http://cvs.sourceforge.net/cgi-bin/viewcvs.cgi/gai m/gaim/src/buddy.c.diff?r1=1.480&r2=1.481 [sourceforge.net]

Here's the problem with all this.

[Anonymous Coward]

My name is eSolutions, a troll from Adequacy and Kuro5hin. I daresay I've written some good trolls in my day -- if perdida still had the AQ archives up, I would link to them. You can find some of my stuff on Kuro5hin, but it's of much lower quality and quantity, as K5 sucks.

In any event, I feel at least a little qualified to discuss posting fake information online with the intent of confusing, angering, and amusing various readers.

The real problem here is that Slashdot editors spend most of their time s

but...

[itallushrt]

Live on freeloading users!

APRIL FOOLS IS DYING

[Anonymous Coward]

It is official; Google confirms: April Fools is dying

One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered April Fools community when a Google search confirmed that Slashdot redership has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all readers. Coming on the heels of a recent Google search which plainly states that April Fools Day has lost more realistic jokes, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. April Fools is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly

In related news

[CausticWindow]

It is official; Foxnews confirms: middle east is dying One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered middle east community when IDC confirmed that middle east market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all servers. Coming on the heels of a recent Foxnews survey which plainly states that middle east has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. middle east is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified

Might have been funny if...

[harlows_monkeys]

This might have been funny if our brains hadn't been numbed into mush by the mindless repetition of the Evil bit joke.

Next year, Slashdot...post one or two good jokes, and that's all. They are much more effective that way.

Re:Might have been funny if...

[CSG_SurferDude]

No, the real joke is that every single STINKING DAY FOR THE NEXT WHOLE FREAKING YEAR, we will see the "Evil Bit" story reposted.

Kinda like Ellen Feiss, Natalie Portman, Petrified Hot Grits down your pants, Soviet Russia and All your base...."

In other breaking news; Ellen Feiss switches to VMS....

I can't believe this!

[eniu!uine]

The entire open source movement is dying and all you guys can talk about are April fools jokes! Don't you know that the FSF is where all free software is made and now that Microsoft has bought it there won't be anymore. Sure, I thought it was a joke at first, but then I saw all the other articles and realized there's no way slashdot would dedicate the entire day to joke stories. The world must really be going to hell.

Re:HAHAH

[Roguelazer]

Can't take it... too many > trying to post outwar links... IRC... Slashdot... Must resist temptation to click link...

Microsoft is shaping up their act.

[rice_burners_suck]

I think it's good that RMS has stopped dreaming his fanatical dreams and has finally grown a brain and made up a license that will undoubtedly be useful for the corporate world. Managers are typically not interested in the savings of $150.00 when downloading a program for free, but they are interested in minimizing risk, and that means having a company back up the software that is being purchased.

I am also glad that Microsoft is finally doing something to jump on the open source bandwagon, considering that

WHAT?!? It's a JOKE!!!

[norweigiantroll]

Looks like we're back to the August 15, 2120 target date for GNU/Hurd 1.0 again...

*shrug*....ROFL

[kien]

Yeah, timezones and equators and stuff are a bitch so I understand why some people went off.

But I don't have much of an opportunity to read /. at work so when I read the link and found myself ROFL by the second paragraph, I was glad that it was posted.

So I think I understand and can empathi[sz]e with those of you tired of April Fool's Day posts. But after a long day on the east coast of the USA that was markedly devoid of any such tomfoolery, I enjoyed it. Nice piece of satire there, Robin.

--K.

CSF

[sstory]

If their software is no longer free, they'll have to change their name to a more accurate one, like "Crappy Software Foundation" or "The organization formerly known as the organization which wants credit and naming rights for what Linus did"

Slashdot To Not Run A Joke Into The Ground

[istartedi]

April Fools!

April Fools

[Ashcrow]

I'm so glad it's April 1! At first I thought the links (like gnufreewindowsxp.com) were slashdoted and this was an end to the FSF as we know it untill I looked at the date.

You got me!

I can't even beleive you had me..

[TheCeltic]

for a second anyway..

Snore...

[Simon Hibbs]

Somebody wake me up when it's worth reading Slashdot again...

Si

*way* too late

[Tony Hoyle]

"Posted by timothy on Wed April 02, 01:08 AM"

April fools jokes are supposed to finish at lunchtime on april 1st, not 1am the *next day*.

Hoax

[dmarx]

This is obviously a hoax. Come on, people, April Fool's is over!

Re:obvious

[geekoid]

If you can make a point eliquontly, don't bother.

before you reply, let me do it for you:

If you can't spell, don't bother. there, now you don't have to say it.

Re:obvious

[intermodal]

actually i was going to remark on your grammar...it seems to me that making a point eloquently would make far more sense than making one i could not make eloquently. no offense intended of course.

Re:SOME OF YOU PAY FOR THIS FUCKING SITE???

[madpuppy]

you might be a troll, but I have not problem with seeing ads over paying for the 80% of tripe this site pumps out, I would rather pay Texstar for Pclinuxonline, at least he provides real value.