ciaran2014 - Slashdot User

Submission + - MS undecided on suing users of its open source .NET

Submitted by ciaran2014 on Tuesday March 31, 2015 @03:36AM

ciaran2014 writes: With Microsoft proudly declaring its .NET runtime open source, a collegue and I decided to look at the licensing aspects. One part, the MIT licence, is straight forward, but there's also a patent promise. The first two-thirds of the first sentence seems to announce good news about Microsoft not suing people. Then the conditions begin. It seems Microsoft can't yet bring itself to release something as free software without retaining a patent threat to limit how those freedoms can be exercised. Overall, we found 4 Shifty Details About Microsoft's "Open Source" .NET.

Submission + - Stallman does slides and brevity for TEDx (gnu.org)

Submitted by ciaran2014 on Sunday September 07, 2014 @10:49AM

ciaran2014 writes: Richard Stallman's long-format talks are well-known — there are videos going back to 2001 and transcripts dating back to 1986 — but he recently condensed his free software talk down to 14 minutes and set it to hand-drawn slides for TEDxGeneva (video link). He introduces with the four freedoms, as always, and then moves on to spyware, surveillance, non-free drivers, free software in schools, non-free javascript, Service as a Software Substitute and how free software is today necessary for a strong democracy. As usual, the talk is suitable for non-techical audiences.

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