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Submission + - GnuPG's Crowdfunding Campaign (goteo.org)

Submitted by peatbakke
peatbakke writes: GnuPG is raising a modest amount of money to fund a variety of projects to increase accessibility, improve documentation, and speed up the release of GnuPG 2.1. From the Goteo.org funding campaign page:

The new GnuPG website will bring bullet-proof privacy to the general public, provide a friendly face of Free Software cryptography, and allow the project to sustainably fund maintenance and development into the future. The new GnuPG.org will be mobile and desktop ready with a fresh design, built for internationalisation, provide non-technical guidance for new users, and have built in management for future subscription donations.

Submission + - Sexy Tech Advertising Sucks for Everyone (peat.org)

Submitted by peatbakke
peatbakke writes: Every now and then someone puts out an ad that is both confoundingly bad or frustratingly offensive. Mushroom Networks latest round of ads on Facebook satisfies both of those conditions, so I put together an open letter that describes why bad and sexist advertising hurts everyone in tech.
GNU is Not Unix

Ubuntu Community Manager: RMS's Post Seems a Bit Childish To Me 529

Posted by samzenpus from the war-or-words dept.
spacenet writes "As a response to RMS speaking out against Ubuntu about its privacy-violating integrated Amazon search results, which he considers to be spyware, Ubuntu Community Manager Jono Bacon has addressed RMS's statements. In his reply, Jono claims that Stallman's views on privacy do not align with Canonical's, that some of his statements are worded in order to 'generate fear, uncertainty, and doubt about Ubuntu' and that 'it just seems a bit childish to me.' The comments on the post itself are well worth a read."

Comment A solution (Score 2) 260

by byolinux (#42222785) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: Best Laptop With Decent Linux Graphics Support?

I found its actually hard to get a machine that's decent these days, unless you're prepared to put up with a bit of crap.

The solution is to build your own custom laptop -- http://www.avadirect.com/gaming-laptop-configurator.asp?PRID=25095

If you go for the "VISIONTEK Killer" wireless card, it has an Atheros chipset, so you can distro-hop to your hearts content. They also ship it with no OS if you like.
DRM

Richard Stallman: 'Apple Has Tightest Digital Handcuffs In History' 515

Posted by Soulskill from the taking-applications-for-digital-houdini dept.
jrepin points out a discussion with Richard Stallman in which he talks about how the Free Software movement is faring in light of companies that have been successful in the long term with very different principles, like Microsoft and Apple. Stallman had this to say: "I would say the free software movement has gone about half the distance it has to travel. We managed to make a mass community but we still have a long way to go to liberate computer users. Those companies are very powerful. They are cleverly finding new ways to take control over users. ... The most widely used non-free programs have malicious features – and I’m talking about specific, known malicious features. ... There are three kinds: those that spy on the user, those that restrict the user, and back doors. Windows has all three. Microsoft can install software changes without asking permission. Flash Player has malicious features, as do most mobile phones. Digital handcuffs are the most common malicious features. They restrict what you can do with the data in your own computer. Apple certainly has the digital handcuffs that are the tightest in history. The i-things, well, people found two spy features and Apple says it removed them and there might be more. When people don’t know about this issue they choose based on immediate convenience and nothing else. And therefore they can be herded into giving up their freedom by a combination of convenient features, pressure from institutions and the network effect."

Comment It's All About Incentives (Score 1) 167

by peatbakke (#41679409) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: How To Get Paid For Open-Sourcing Your Work?

(background: I've been freelancing for about twelve years, with several engagements that have resulted in open source contributions)

If you're freelancing, the general rule is that the customer owns everything you produce within the scope of the contract. This means you do not own the copyright, and therefore you can't open source the code. The specific phrase you look for in your contracts is "work for hire" ... and although IANAL, I believe this is the implicit legal relationship when someone pays you to produce something.

It's very difficult to get around that rule, or to outline specific exceptions ahead of time -- but you can change the incentives to encourage your client to contribute code to the open source community.

I offer to reduce my rates for any work we mutually agree to release as open source. I benefit by getting my name and work in broader distribution, my clients benefit by paying less for the work, and the open source world grows a little bit. It's a reasonable trade off for all parties, and even if most clients don't exercise that option, they appreciate the spirit of such an offer.

Where it gets hairy is when you're making changes to code that has been open sourced under a "viral" license, like the GPL. If that is the case, then you should inform your client that they are bound by the terms of that license -- that those changes *necessarily* become open source. Keep a copy of those emails. If your client decides that they're going to skip out on that obligation, you'll want to make sure your ass is covered if/when your client gets in trouble ...
Social Networks

Bring On the Decentralized Social Networking 238

Posted by timothy from the node-distinction dept.
Frequent contributor Bennett Haselton writes: "The distributed-social-networking Diaspora Project recently announced that their software will be released as open source. I don't know if Diaspora specifically will be the Next Big Thing in social networking, but I hope that social networking moves to a decentralized model within the next few years, where anyone can set up and run a hub to administer profiles for themselves and their friends or clients, and where profiles can interact with each other in a distributed fashion instead of on a centralized system like Facebook." Read on for Bennett's thoughts on how that model could work.
GNOME

GNOME Developers Lay Out Plans for GNOME OS 208

Posted by Unknown Lamer from the everyone's-doing-it dept.
From the H: "Allan Day has written a blog post on the concrete plans for 'GNOME OS' and provided background on the ideas that have motivated those plans ... Day starts by emphasizing that GNOME OS is not an attempt to replace existing distributions. Although the creation of a standalone GNOME OS is part of the plans, the idea is to make that a testing and development platform, and any improvements that come from GNOME OS should 'directly improve what the GNOME project is able to offer distributions.' Many of the drivers for GNOME OS are, Day says, old ideas to improve the development experience, such as automated testing and sandboxed applications, and while the developers could have separate initiatives for each feature, the idea is to work on them as a 'holistic plan' under the moniker 'GNOME OS.'" A few slides provide more context. In the works are stabilizing the platform APIs, improving deployment of applications, making everything automatically testable, and probably the most controversial: "The increasing popularity of mobile and touch devices represents a challenge to existing desktop solutions. This situation is complicated by the emergence of new hybrid devices that combine keyboards, touchpads and touchscreens. During our discussions last week we talked about how existing types of devices – primarily laptops and desktops – have to remain the primary focus for GNOME ... At the same time, we also want to ensure that GNOME remains compatible with new hardware. ... We have set the goal of having a touch-compatible GNOME 3 within a maximum of 18 months." The drive toward touch may seem obnoxious to desktop users, but spreading Free Software to a hardware ecosystem that is currently locked down and proprietary seems like a good goal to have.

Comment Re:Updates (Score 1) 730

by peatbakke (#39294939) Attached to: YouTube Identifies Birdsong As Copyrighted Music

By "release" I mean "to drop the claim against the video in question via the YouTube Content Management System." It's a specific action that needed to be taken with the claim tool, not a statement about releasing in the sense you're talking about. Forgive the colloquialism?

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