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Comment Re:Ain't freedom a bitch... (Score 1) 551

by mattpun (#49015677) Attached to: RMS Objects To Support For LLVM's Debugger In GNU Emacs's Gud.el

True freedom must necessarily include the freedom to do things that piss others off, or else it is not truly free.

That's true, but most people don't really want "true freedom", like the freedom to kill somebody or to set houses on fire. We accept restrictions on freedom when it interferes with others' freedom.

That is exactly the philosophy of the GPL: They believe that if they give you the freedom to use the code in proprietary software without releasing the source, it ultimately harms the freedom of others to modify the software.

You may not agree with that analysis, bit simply claiming that the BSD license is better because it is "freer" is absurd.
Java

Apache Resigns From the JCP Executive Committee 136

Posted by timothy from the I'll-resign-my-commission dept.
iammichael writes "The Apache Software Foundation has resigned its seat on the Java SE/EE Executive Committee due to a long dispute over the licensing restrictions placed on the TCK (test kit validating third-party Java implementations are compatible with the specification)."
Programming

Simpler "Hello World" Demonstrated In C 582

Posted by kdawson from the non-obfuscated dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Wondering where all that bloat comes from, causing even the classic 'Hello world' to weigh in at 11 KB? An MIT programmer decided to make a Linux C program so simple, she could explain every byte of the assembly. She found that gcc was including libc even when you don't ask for it. The blog shows how to compile a much simpler 'Hello world,' using no libraries at all. This takes me back to the days of programming bare-metal on DOS!"
The Internet

IPv4 Free Pool Drops Below 10%, 1.0.0.0/8 Allocated 467

Posted by kdawson from the pure-water dept.
mysidia writes "A total of 16,777,216 IP address numbers were just allocated to the Asian Pacific Network Information Centre IP address registry for assignment to users. Some venerable IP addresses such as 1.1.1.1 and 1.2.3.4 have been officially assigned to the registry itself temporarily, for testing as part of the DEBOGON project. The major address blocks 1.0.0.0/8 and 27.0.0.0/8, are chosen accordance with a decision by ICANN to assign the least-desirable remaining IP address ranges to the largest regional registries first, reserving most more desirable blocks of addresses for the African and Latin American internet users, instead of North America, Europe, or Asia. In other words: of the 256 major networks in IPv4, only 24 network blocks remain unallocated in the global free pool, and many of the remaining networks have been tainted or made less desirable by unofficial users who attempted an end-run around the registration process, and treated 'RESERVED' IP addresses as 'freely available' for their own internal use. This allocation is right on target with projected IPv4 consumption and was predicted by the IPv4 report, which has continuously and reliably estimated global pool IP address exhaustion for late 2011 and regional registry exhaustion by late 2012. So, does your enterprise intranet use any unofficial address ranges for private networks?" Reader dude_nl sends in a summary of the issues with allocating from 1.0.0.0/8 from the BGPmon.net blog. "As Alain Durand mentioned on Nanog: 'Who said the water at the bottom of the barrel of IPv4 addresses will be very pure? We ARE running out and the global pain is increasing.'"
Privacy

Submission + - Palm Pre reports your location, usage, to Palm (kitenet.net) 1

Submitted by
AceJohnny
AceJohnny writes: "Joey Hess found that his Palm Pre was ratting on him. It turns out the Pre periodically uploads detailed information about the user, including installed apps, application usage (and crashes), as well as GPS coordinates to Palm. This, of course, without user consent or control. The only way he found to disable this was to modify system files."
GNU is Not Unix

Submission + - Stallman Says Pirate Party Hurts Free Software (gnu.org)

Submitted by bonch
bonch writes: Richard Stallman has written an article on the GNU website describing the effect the Swedish Pirate Party's platform would have on the free software movement. While he supports general changes to copyright law, he makes a point that many anti-copyright proponents don't realize--the GPL itself is a copyright license that relies on copyright law to protect access to source code. According to Stallman, the Pirate Party's proposal of a five-year limit on copyright would remove the freedom users have to gain access to source code by eventually allowing its inclusion in proprietary products. Stallman suggests requiring proprietary software to also release its code within five years to even the balance of power.
Games

EA Won't Use DRM For The Sims 3 128

Posted by Soulskill from the learning-from-their-mistakes dept.
After taking heavy criticism for the use of SecuROM in Spore and other games, EA has made the decision to go back to simple serial code authentication for The Sims 3. EA's Rod Humble said simply, "We feel like this is a good, time-proven solution that makes it easy for you to play the game without DRM methods that feel overly invasive or leave you concerned about authorization server access in the distant future."

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