#praise stallman

[crappy-homestuck-confessions]

Wikipedia[c] is a free content online encyclopedia written and maintained by a community of volunteers, known as Wikipedians, through open collaboration and the wiki software MediaWiki. Wikipedia is the largest and most-read reference work in history,[3][4] and is consistently ranked among the ten most visited websites; as of August 2024, it was ranked fourth by Semrush,[5] and seventh by Similarweb.[6] Founded by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger on January 15, 2001, Wikipedia has been hosted since 2003 by the Wikimedia Foundation, an American nonprofit organization funded mainly by donations from readers.[7] Initially only available in English, editions of Wikipedia in more than 300 other languages have been developed. The English Wikipedia, with its over 6.9 million articles, is the largest of the editions, which together comprise more than 63 million articles and attract more than 1.5 billion unique device visits and 13 million edits per month (about 5 edits per second on average) as of April 2024.[W 1] In July 2024, over 25% of Wikipedia's traffic was from the United States, followed by Japan at 6.2%, the United Kingdom at 5.8%, Russia at 5.2%, Germany at 5%, and the remaining 51% split among other countries.[8] Wikipedia has been praised for its enablement of the democratization of knowledge, extent of coverage, unique structure, and culture. It has been criticized for exhibiting systemic bias, particularly gender bias against women and geographical bias against the Global South (Eurocentrism).[9][10] While the reliability of Wikipedia was frequently criticized in the 2000s, it has improved over time, receiving greater praise from the late 2010s onward[3][11][12] while becoming an important fact-checking site.[13][14] Wikipedia has been censored by some national governments, ranging from specific pages to the entire site.[15][16] Articles on breaking news are often accessed as sources for frequently updated information about those events.[17][18] Various collaborative online encyclopedias were attempted before the start of Wikipedia, but with limited success.[19] Wikipedia began as a complementary project for Nupedia, a free online English-language encyclopedia project whose articles were written by experts and reviewed under a formal process.[20] It was founded on March 9, 2000, under the ownership of Bomis, a web portal company. Its main figures were Bomis CEO Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger, editor-in-chief for Nupedia and later Wikipedia.[1][21] Nupedia was initially licensed under its own Nupedia Open Content License, but before Wikipedia was founded, Nupedia switched to the GNU Free Documentation License at the urging of Richard Stallman.[W 2] Wales is credited with defining the goal of making a publicly editable encyclopedia,[22][W 3] while Sanger is credited with the strategy of using a wiki to reach that goal.[W 4] On January 10, 2001, Sanger proposed on the Nupedia mailing list to create a wiki as a "feeder" project for Nupedia.[W 5] Wikipedia was launched on January 15, 2001[20] as a single English-language edition at www.wikipedia.com,[W 6] and was announced by Sanger on the Nupedia mailing list.[22] The name originated from a blend of the words wiki and encyclopedia.[23][24] Its integral policy of "neutral point-of-view"[W 7] was codified in its first few months. Otherwise, there were initially relatively few rules, and it operated independently of Nupedia.[22] Bomis originally intended for it to be a for-profit business.[25] Wikipedia gained early contributors from Nupedia, Slashdot postings, and web search engine indexing. Language editions were created beginning in March 2001, with a total of 161 in use by the end of 2004.[W 8][W 9] Nupedia and Wikipedia coexisted until the former's servers were taken down permanently in 2003, and its text was incorporated into Wikipedia. The English Wikipedia passed the mark of 2 million articles on September 9, 2007, making it the largest encyclopedia ever assembled, surpassing the Yongle Encyclopedia made in China during the Ming dynasty in 1408, which had held the recor

[tired-and-clumsy]

Thank you for asking! Caveats that 1) this is for PC and home server applications only, because those are the use cases that I and the people I know use Linux for most often, and 2) these are my own hot takes, feel free to disagree and shout at me in the notes.

So, imo there are 4 Linux (GNU/Linux if you will) distros that I consider endgame daily drivers for almost every single Linux user, because they fill a specific desirable niche, and do it the best.

1: Debian - the universal, default distro. The perfect everything works and nothing breaks system for people who want to get things done. There's a reason almost every other distro is based on it, and with some time you can customise it to act like any of those distros without the added baggage (looking at you Canonical).

2: Arch - the power user distro. For people who want their computer new, fast, and shiny, those who fuss over detail and want everything in place, and those who think that booting their computer to see an inscrutable error and a terminal prompt means they're in for a "fun afternoon". Full disclosure I am currently running Arch and I have no plans on changing that any time soon because it's awesome. Super powerful, super customisable, there's a reason it's so popular with the nerds.

3: Gentoo - similar to Arch, but for the from-source nerds. If you want to know absolutely everything that happens on your system, from scratch, and have the power to do whatever you want whenever you want for whatever reason, then Gentoo is the distro for you. I have met 1 person who used it and they terrified me.

4: NixOS - the declarative distro. Perfectly functional, perfectly perfect (note that's functional as in functional programming, having used it for 6 months it is not very functional in the traditional sense). But for those who want easy upkeep, booting to old generations, an ability to reproduce their environment at any time for any reason, all the reasons people keep singing its praises, NixOS is the only option. It would be my go to if it wasn't so unusable (and that's coming from a Haskell programmer).

There are of course other distros for specific use cases, like Porteus if you want a computer on your keychain, Kali Linux if you think you're a hacker but you don't know what Qubes OS is, and Alpine if you really hate Richard Stallman I guess, but for 99% of people one of the 4 above is the right choice to end distro hopping.

However, I don't think any of these - aside from maybe Debian, maybe - should be installed by a first time user. NixOS can be good if you're installing it on someone else's machine and they only need a browser (think grandparents' wheezing 10 year old tower pc) because you know for a fact they can't do anything to break it, but none of these are for beginners in the Linux community. Recommending distros like this to newbies is partly how Linux has managed to retain its reputation as complicated and inscrutable, and I do not want to contribute to that by giving someone the impression they should try out Gentoo to 'see what all this Linux business is about'.

I'm realizing that I'm not that familiar with the less-technical distributions and I probably should be tbh! Especially with how often I recommend Linux to people lmao

[oct2pus]

BACK AT IT AGAIN ON I3

[gpuzzle]

ever since I switched to Mint I started being able to go back to class easily again, felt more energetic, and my ex/friend who I still absolutely fucking simp started talking to me after a sabbatical

praise fucking Stallman

[wapdrita]

Filmora x torrent

FILMORA X TORRENT LICENSE

Language editions were created beginning in March 2001, with a total of 161 in use by the end of 2004. Wikipedia gained early contributors from Nupedia, Slashdot postings, and web search engine indexing. Bomis originally intended it as a business for profit. Otherwise, there were initially relatively few rules, and it operated independently of Nupedia. Its integral policy of "neutral point-of-view" was codified in its first few months. The domains (later redirecting to ) and were registered on January 12, 2001, and January 13, 2001, respectively, and Wikipedia was launched on January 15, 2001, as a single English-language edition at and announced by Sanger on the Nupedia mailing list. On January 10, 2001, Sanger proposed on the Nupedia mailing list to create a wiki as a "feeder" project for Nupedia. Wales is credited with defining the goal of making a publicly editable encyclopedia, while Sanger is credited with the strategy of using a wiki to reach that goal.

FILMORA X TORRENT LICENSE

Nupedia was initially licensed under its own Nupedia Open Content License, but even before Wikipedia was founded, Nupedia switched to the GNU Free Documentation License at the urging of Richard Stallman. Its main figures were Bomis CEO Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger, editor-in-chief for Nupedia and later Wikipedia. It was founded on March 9, 2000, under the ownership of Bomis, a web portal company. Wikipedia began as a complementary project for Nupedia, a free online English-language encyclopedia project whose articles were written by experts and reviewed under a formal process. Various collaborative online encyclopedias were attempted before the start of Wikipedia, but with limited success. Wikipedia originally developed from another encyclopedia project called Nupedia. 15.5.2 Articles re Wikipedia usage patterns.10.1 Trusted source to combat fake news.8.5 Internal research and operational development.8.1 Wikimedia Foundation and Wikimedia movement affiliates.7.3.1 Coverage of topics and selection bias.7.3 Coverage of topics and systemic bias.Articles on breaking news are often accessed as a source of frequently updated information about those events. In April 2018, Facebook and YouTube announced that they would help users detect fake news by suggesting fact-checking links to related Wikipedia articles. It has been censored by world governments, ranging from specific pages to the entire site. The website's coverage of controversial topics such as American politics and major events like the COVID-19 pandemic has received substantial media attention. The reliability of Wikipedia was frequently criticized in the 2000s but has improved over time, as Wikipedia has been generally praised in the late 2010s and early 2020s. Wikipedia has received praise for its enablement of the democratization of knowledge, extent of coverage, unique structure, culture, and reduced degree of commercial bias but criticism for exhibiting systemic bias, particularly gender bias against women and alleged ideological bias. In 2006, Time magazine stated that the policy of allowing anyone to edit had made Wikipedia the "biggest (and perhaps best) encyclopedia in the world." Its combined editions comprise more than 59 million articles, attracting around 2 billion unique device visits per month and more than 17 million edits per month (1.9 edits per second) as of November 2020. Initially available only in English, versions in other languages were quickly developed. Sanger coined its name as a blend of " wiki" and " encyclopedia." Wales was influenced by the " spontaneous order" ideas associated with Friedrich Hayek and the Austrian School of economics after being exposed to these ideas by Austrian economist and Mises Institute Senior Fellow Mark Thornton. On January 15, 2001, Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger launched Wikipedia. It is hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation, an American non-profit organization funded mainly through donations. It is consistently one of the 10 most popular websites ranked by the Similarweb and formerly Alexa as of 2022, Wikipedia was ranked the 7th most popular site. Wikipedia is the largest and most-read reference work in history. Wikipedia ( / ˌ w ɪ k ɪ ˈ p iː d i ə/ ( listen) wik-ih- PEE-dee-ə or / ˌ w ɪ k i-/ ( listen) wik-ee-) is a multilingual free online encyclopedia written and maintained by a community of volunteers through open collaboration and a wiki-based editing system. Most text is also dual-licensed under GFDL media licensing varies

[gpuzzle]

praise Stallman

no actually I'm gonna give this its own post.

get yourself a USB stick from any dollar store, install ubuntu with persistent storage on it. There is literally no reason not to, and it means that you now have a little computer of your very own that no one except those who physically get their hands on your USB stick can use (and you can password lock the OS) and that you can run from literally almost any PC with USB ports. Including public machines in libraries and, probably, school laptops.

If you're a kid who needs privacy, someone in trouble who just needs their own machine to play and talk to people on, somebody who doesn't have the money to get your own computer, etc etc etc, do this. Actually do this even if you do have your own computer. There is literally no reason to not have a little backup system on a thumb drive that you can use anytime. If your main computer starts acting up or gets fucked over by an update or something? Just plug in your thumb drive and use your computer from your handy-dandy mini Ubuntu installation.

[edwardsg491-blog]

H/FOSS History & Philosophy Discussion (09/06/2019)

Note: Date formatted in MM/DD/YYYY

Something that I noted of the readings that prepared our class for this discussion was that they each seemed to have a different tone regarding the usefulness of free/open source software. Eric Raymond’s approach (in “The Cathedral and the Bazaar”) was rather optimistic, praising, and declarative of how it could be of immense use to developers, whereas “Producing OSS: Introduction” was more wary of its pitfalls and willing to explore its faults.

During the class discussion, this was explored in a way that elaborated more on this divided tone by hearing about many varied possibilities and pros and cons of open source versus closed source project models. This assisted my understanding, as the orgiin of the prerequisite readings’ content came from the standpoint of developers in a way to teach their readers, but the discussion discussed theoretical pros and cons from like-minded peers with similar relevant experience. Also, many ideas were presented that I had not considered prior. For instance, the difference in difficulty of overhead and management between the two models was something that I had pondered while doing the reading but still found nebulous. I had also not considered the vitality of the open source model’s reliance on the contentiousness of its developer base to refrain from plaguing the project with malicious code; I found to be an interesting topic that I felt was worthy of continued discussion. A very interesting and demonstrative example that was brought up by another student was that of the notorious DIY Drones program, which was utilized by the terrorist group ISIS to operate drones for bombing campaigns. This brings up an important ethical question of the access that open source coding provides.

This leads me to another topic of interest that came up within my group and inspired much discussion of Richard Stallman’s video address detailing his “four freedoms”. To provide context, my group spent some time discussing how we both simultaneously respected his legacy and self-written axioms for open source software and found his presented idea of “justice” regarding proprietary software to be far-fetched, quixotic, and economically unrealistic. As per my last example, it seems that there also exists an posable ethical dispute that could provide fodder for future fruitful discussion.

The readings and preparation material from this round of discussion were:

The Cathedral and the Bazaar by Eric S. Raymond

Producing Open Source Software by Karl Fogel, Ch. 1 - Introduction

Teaching Open Source by Greg DeKoenigsberg, Ch. 1- Foreword, Sections 1.1-1.4

Free software and the four freedoms, a video essay by Richard Stallman [VIDEO]

The questions covered during class discussion were:

What is the difference between the Cathedral and the Bazaar models? How is the Bazaar model beneficial to the software development process? How is it detrimental? Same questions for the Cathedral model.

What is the difference between free, open source and proprietary software? How can a FOSS project attract developers? Do FOSS projects compete with each other in any way? What benefits can be obtained by “opening up” a project (converting it to FOSS)? Are there any drawbacks?

How important are the four freedoms that Stallman talks about? Can proprietary software be considered “unjust” for users? Should the issue of injustice receive more attention, such as from the government? Would FOSS security issues compared to proprietary software?

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Kickstarting a "libre" recording of all of Bach's fugues

Robert Douglass writes, "You have graciously covered the Open Goldberg Variations and the Open Well-Tempered Clavier projects on Boing Boing in the past, and it has resulted in these works being the most discoverable and obtainable examples of Bach's work on the internet (reading Wikipedia? You'll find these recordings. Searching Google or YouTube because you're curious about Bach? You'll find these recordings. Both recordings have also received lavish critical praise from the classical music industry's leading reviewers, eg Gramophone magazine."

Even Richard Stallman found these recordings, and he promptly wrote an email encouraging us to drop the word "Open" in favor of "Free" or "Libre". And when RMS writes you telling you to change the name of your music project, you change the name of your music project =)

The Libre Art of the Fuge. deals with J.S. Bach's final masterpiece, a collection of 20 fugues all developing from a single theme. The ambition of the work was to display Bach's mastery of the fugal technique and to cement his legacy. To do that, he wanted to culminate in a final fugue that literally spells his name, B-A-C-H, in musical notation. Unfortunately, Bach died before completing that work, and it has remained a musical mystery (and tragedy) for hundreds of years.

Kimiko Ishizaka will not only record The Art of the Fugue, but she has also composed an ending to the piece based on the music that Bach left us, and this new composition will also be released under a Creative Commons license as part of the new OpenScore.cc project. This is a significant new extension of the "Open Goldberg" model, in that it is the first time a newly composed work of music is being released in this manner.

Finally, the project encompasses two high profile performances, one in the newly opened Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg, and the second in Carnegie Hall.

The fact that Kimiko has been able to turn directly to fan funding for her recordings is significant in an industry where most other classical music performers have to self finance their recordings, and pay record labels to release them. Kimiko is eminently grateful to her fans and supporters of free culture for allowing her to focus all of her energies on growing the public domain and bringing the music of J.S. Bach to a far broader audience than ever imagined.

https://boingboing.net/2017/08/08/kimiko-ishizaka.html

[deltaengineering]

spring anime 2017 part 2: girlfriendship is magic

I can’t believe Maidragon was so powerful it brought the entire 90s back.

See also:

• spring anime 2017 part 1: woke up late

• spring anime 2017 part 3: comfy and easy to wear

• spring anime 2017 bonus round: things you already knew were good

Clockwork Planet

Yes, forecasts this season predict heavy showers of magical girlfriends.This time the dude afflicted by this sudden precipitation is a clockwork nerd, who gets a clockwork gothloli dropped on him. This may be less of a coincidence than it sounds because for spurious reasons the entire planet has been replaced by clockwork – if you thought this show was mentally capable of having a metaphorical title, I have bad news. So basically this is teen schmuck + robot superweapon having fights in a city that looks like a lazy steampunk cosplayer’s top hat, in between erotic misunderstandings. I’m regretting that I called Macchiavellism’s fights bad because a couple good action cuts are already a lot to ask for, as evidenced here: It looks just terrible, and obviously the content itself is even worse. Nuh-uh.

Eromanga-sensei

I love Hiro Kanzaki’s character designs. There, I said it. I just wish they weren’t attached to bullshit like OreImo or Eromanga-sensei, which, being by the same author and all, is more or less the same thing. It’s pretty bad when the implied incest fantasy is the least revolting thing about your celebration of otaku shittery: So a schlubby light novel protagonist who also writes light novels (and who happens to be surrounded by hot bitches that just love people who write light novels because that’s so cool) finds out that the mysterious porn artist he’s collaborating with over the internet is actually his hikkikomori little sister, who reacts to this revelation like any girl would: being tsundere. This means it’s full of mildly self-deprecating nerd humor, the infuriating kind that makes it abundantly clear that if the author meant any of it, he wouldn’t write this crap. Even worse is that the sibling relationship is played for sappy family feels, which I would be more willing to give the benefit of the doubt to if this wasn’t OreImo 2: The Sequel To OreImo. And the main guy can’t keep his eyes from wandering anyway, so it’s not like there’s a mystery here. I’ll say it looks real good, obviously there’s money in the OreImo market and it’s well made as a result, plus the aforementioned character designs. But if I want more Hiro Kanzaki I’d rather watch Go! Go! 575 again.

Hinako Note

There’s actually no Manga Time Kirara adaptation this season, but worry not, Hinako Note is indistinguishable from one of those (that one being GochiUsa). So it’s Kirara at it’s most basic too: 5 girls with mild, generic quirks hang out and cute things take place. You get your shy one, you get your hungry one, you get your tiny maid one, etc. Ostensibly this is theater-themed, but as of episode 1 it’s less about theater than K-ON is about music, and that’s saying something. Now, these shows are always extremely inoffensive by design, and if they do nothing fundamentally wrong they just come across as dull. Since this does nothing fundamentally wrong, it just comes across as dull. Congratulations, Hinako Note, you pulled it off even while being born in the wrong magazine.

Kabukibu!

The easy hook when writing about Kabukibu is that it’s another DEEN show about a classic Japanese performance artform, but it’s blindingly obvious right away that Kabukibu is no Rakugo Shinjuu – it being about a school club is right in the title after all, and it has the requisite spurious punctuation too, so everything else falls into place from there. The main innovation is that this is about cute guys doing cute kabuki. As always, our main dude has to gather the five members to bring the school club back to life first. So it’s unimaginative and honestly rather bad, but I still like it. For starters there’s the bit where our lead is such a nerd that he spends every conversation clearing up common misconceptions about kabuki, which is hilarious, since it resembles weeaboo Richard Stallman wanting to interject for a second over and over again. Secondly, the comical cast of misfits does seem to have potential, with a rock singer that can’t sing, an obvious woman that is actually a woman, and so on. Overall it reminds me of Cheer Danshi, an obvious C-list production that gets by by being earnest. If I can learn to not be annoyed at the yodelling kabuki inflection, I might actually watch this for a lark.

The King’s Avatar

This may be completely outside the “Japanese cartoon” purview of this post since it’s 100% Chinese and doesn’t even have a Japanese dub like the Haoliners productions, but it’s on MAL so it counts I suppose. Also, it’s rather... good? The King’s Avatar is about a legendary MMO pro gamer who gets kicked off his team and has to give up his account, which afflicts him with a multitude of sads. After a bit of soul-searching he starts playing the game again on a new server, starting from level 1. What makes this not as bad as it sounds is that it’s not an isekai bonanza, but a sports show where the sport happens to be visually interesting, and it’s a slow and contemplative sports show at that. The whole “starting from level 1" thing is a topical twist on the sports comeback story, and it looks fairly nice too, a few bits of unfortunate CG aside (but that’s common, so whatever). Yeah, I like this, and if fansubs turn out to not be a huge hassle to get hold of I’ll give it a try.

Love Kome - We Love Rice

Back in Japan, please enjoy this short comedy about rice crop gijinka, boyband edition. It has atrocious character designs and is painfully unfunny. So nothing new there.

Re:Creators

Girlfriends keep falling in my lap, and that might mean my eyes will soon be turning red. Hey, this is the old “reverse isekai”, where some nerd gets to live with a bunch of characters from his favorite anime that inexplicably became real. Brace for domestic hijinks and fish-out-of-water comedy - and a lot of action, because this is Ei Aoki working with offbrand Fate material. He may be this show’s saving grace, because I’m willing to forgive dumb action anime a lot if it at least manages to have some actual fucking action in it. The idea that these anime characters think they’re in the “realm of the gods” (i.e., their creators, you see) also has some storytelling potential, if it doesn’t get buried under stuff blowing up and comedic trips to the konbini. And it doesn’t have a “walking in on the girl naked” scene, which probably counts as “classy” in this field. I don’t know, it sure is stupid as hell but it might be a good time. We’ll see.

Renai Boukun

Renai Boukun is a comedy’s comedy about a very silly cupid that ships people, and herself. As a real anime comedy, it is of course chock full of people acting wacky followed by reaction faces, which is my kryptonite. I do have to admit that this show at least goes all out with it, it’s fast and furious and never lets up. Some of the jokes are even okay (mostly the more absurd ones like the unsettlingly bizarre cat with a human face), though most are just repetitive, like the yandere girl being constantly jealous. Yeah, this is just totally not my thing, but if I give it any amount of praise that probably means it’s a good one?

Seikaisuru Kado

Never say that bureaucrats don’t get no respect, because this is the second season in a row where we get an anime about pencilpushers being totally awesome. The main difference between this and ACCA is that ACCA was roughly 80% style, and Seikaisuru Kado has no style. It makes up for it with conviction, because this is a show where some desk jockey assigned to wind down an electroplating business spends a night googling, with the result being him developing a new electroplating procedure that saves the company and impresses physics professors – and that is the intro before the science fiction aspect comes into play. Oh yeah, there’s a science fiction aspect. So after a job well done, Super Bureaucrat Man is taking a flight from Haneda airport when a Borg cube unceremoniously drops on the plane. The rest of the episode is spent with scientists trying to figure out what happened, mostly by shooting tank shells at the cube and so on. Guess they just aren’t bureaucratic enough, because by the end our hero emerges from the cube, having apparently come to an agreement with the proprietor. Uh. Yes, this is an extreme amount of nonsense, and I have no idea where this is supposed to be going. With the amount of military hardware on display, it makes me think “GATE, but not for total assholes”, but who knows. It looks very weird too, it’s a CG show that cuts a lot of corners by using 2D animation (I know, right?). Usually CG characters are good when you have a lot of action because it enables a fluid camera, but this has no action and they still could have done their special effects in CG like everyone else. So it ends up as an anime where the important characters look worse than the unimportant ones they couldn’t be bothered to build a CG model for. The whole thing is bizarre enough to be intriguing, but I don’t have high hopes for it, especially since the slots for shows I actually want to watch are now filling up.

Tsuki ga Kirei

Case in point: Tsuki ga Kirei is a romance about a bookish nerd dude who loves to quote Dazai at his most morose, and a neurotic girl. Needless to say, it is very awkward, but also kind of cute. This may seem like a slim synopsis, but that’s pretty much it: Tsuki ga Kirei is the sort of show that has the potential to be great if it pays off, but just becomes boring to infuriating Mari Okada clone #3879435 if it doesn’t. So it’s a risky proposition, and not one you can call based on the first episode. On the execution level it seems to do it right so far, it’s well directed, sticks to its slow, sensitive tone and looks pleasant and detailed – the only distracting thing are regrettable and robotic CG background characters all over the place. Overall, this is a show that demands at least three episodes, which it will get from me. Ask again later.

Twin Angel BREAK

Finally, if you’re looking for some basic-ass mahou shoujo shit, here’s the new Twin Angel spinoff. It’s indeed some basic-ass mahou shoujo shit (two-girl team aka PreCure version). The genki red one and the reserved blue one go around fighting evil by the moonlight or whatever, while being cheered on by their one-gimmick-each friends. I somehow doubt this thing is setting itself up for a subversion of any kind, so yeah. What you see is what you get. The only memorable thing is that the action is more than merely bad here, it’s comically bad. Seriously, it’s somewhere between Astro Fighter Sunred and Ninja Slayer. Too bad the rest of the show is just unambitiously competent, so watching it for production pratfalls seems like it’s not worth it either.

[infoscavenger]

Bazaar: a liberating style of software development?

Tuesday, Sept 10, 2019

In class we discussed Richard Stallman’s four freedoms and the effectiveness of the bazaar model vs the cathedral model of software development.

Stallman categorizes the four freedoms as the freedom to run the program, study and modify a program’s source code, to distribute copies of the original program and to redistribute modified copies of the program. Stallman’s ideas form the pillars of Free Open Source Software movement and distinguish truly free ‘libre’ software from free to use ‘gratis’ software. It was pointed out in class  that this was an important distinction as the ability to see and modify the source code meant that the programs were less likely to indulge in nefarious practices like selling user data, spreading viruses or cryptojacking.

The remainder of the class focused on the differences between and the effectiveness of the bazaar model and the cathedral model of software development. In the cathedral model of software development, relatively few professional developers conceive, design and produce software under close supervision. This model was praised for its focused vision -how the functions of the program undergo little change since conception-, ability to produce a refined product and its reliability -the fact that the project will see completion. However, the cathedral model was also criticized by its longer development times, vulnerability for bugs and relatively high costs.

On the other hand, the bazaar model had software developers working together to create programs that were useful or interesting to them. Frequent releases and a large number of collaborators are some of the characteristics of this model. The bazaar model was applauded for its ability to detect bugs early, its shorter development times and its low costs. Proponents of the bazaar model also said that the bazaar model made the developer feel a sense of accomplishment and pride in their work. It was pointed out during the discussion that in the bazaar model since more people can scrutinize the code the program is less likely to be malicious or have bugs. Some of the shortcomings of the bazaar model were that it required significant overhead initially, as a bare-bones program needed to be up and running before it could attract contributors, and that it required a large number of contributors to be effective.

Having heard about both the bazaar and the cathedral model of software development I prefer the bazaar model as it primarily promotes unity and healthy competition among developers. At the same time, some caution needs to be exercised while adopting this model because of its open nature. This vulnerability was exemplified when the maintainer of the popular javascript library event-stream was replaced and the new maintainer injected bitcoin stealing code into the library affecting thousands of computers1.

References: [1] https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/11/26/npm_repo_bitcoin_stealer/

[neptunecreek]

Honoring the 2018 Pioneer Award Winners and John Perry Barlow

EFF’s annual Pioneer Awards Ceremony recognizes extraordinary individuals for their commitment and leadership in extending freedom and innovation on the electronic frontier. At this year’s event held on September 27 in San Francisco, EFF rededicated the Pioneer Awards to EFF co-founder and Grateful Dead lyricist John Perry Barlow. Barlow’s commitment to online freedom was commemorated by dubbing the Pioneer Awards statuette the “Barlow.” EFF welcomed keynote speaker Daniel Ellsberg, known for his work in releasing the Pentagon papers, to help award the very first Barlows. This year's honorees were fair use champion Stephanie Lenz, European Digital Rights leader Joe McNamee, and groundbreaking content moderation researcher Sarah T. Roberts.

Read the transcript of the full 2018 Pioneer Awards Ceremony here.

The evening kicked off with EFF Executive Director Cindy Cohn who had the honor of renaming the Pioneer Award as the “Barlow” to pay tribute to Barlow’s work creating EFF and his role in establishing the movement for Internet freedom. “Barlow was one of the first people to see the potential of the Internet as a place of freedom where voices long silenced could find an audience and people could connect, regardless of physical distance,” Cohn said. (If you’re an award winner and reading this, you’ll be happy to know she also gave the green light to previous award winners to retroactively call their awards the Barlow.)

Cindy Cohn dedicates the Pioneer Awards to EFF co-founder John Perry Barlow.

Cohn introduced two of his daughters, Anna and Amelia Barlow (known affectionately as the Barlowettes), to the stage to share some words. Anna paid tribute to her father’s talents and his ability to weave two worlds together, and shared a video of him speaking about the necessity of the physical world to provide a framework for love, illustrating his theory of life.

Amelia centered on gratitude sharing funny anecdotes on her father’s ancestral connections to early America. She emphasized the important of perceptivity, respect, and wisdom needed in the information era in carrying her father’s legacy forward, and in an emotional moment told the room, “I really feel like those people are you.” She continued, “Maybe we all will be guided by the wisdom of those who have come before us and not forget what is true as a means of seeking a beautiful future with the long view, the long game, and all beings in mind.”

Amelia Barlow addresses the audience during the 'Barlow' dedication.

Cohn introduced Daniel Ellsberg, Barlow’s friend and board member of the Freedom of the Press Foundation. Ellsberg’s release of the Pentagon papers in 1971 exposed U.S. criminality in Vietnam at great personal risk to himself, and he has since tirelessly supported whistleblowers and worked to shed light on government surveillance. Cohn highlighted Ellsberg’s understanding of how national security can affect the psyche of a government official as secrecy becomes more than a job, but an identity. This makes it even more difficult for whistleblowers to step forward. “I can honestly say that without you as a role model for breaking out of the secrecy cult, the NSA's mass surveillance programs would still likely be a secret to this day,” she said as she thanked him for his service.

Daniel Ellsberg and Cindy Cohn

Ellsberg took the stage to a standing ovation, and shared his impressions of the Supreme Court hearings. “I believed Anita Hill then. I believe Christine Blasey Ford now,” he said. He told the story of how he first met Barlow and Barlow called him a “revelationary,” a term, he mused humorously, that was “a lot better than ‘whistleblower.’”

A high point was hearing Ellsworth call the Pioneer Awards the most exciting day of his life, as he was finally able to meet Chelsea Manning, who was in attendance that evening. He joked he had missed her many times, once seeing the back of her head. “But I waited 39 years for her to appear in this world,” he said before continuing on to detail the significance of the documents she leaked. He went on the praise both Manning and Edward Snowden, “I have often said that I identify more with them as revelationaries than with any other people in the world.”

"Here's the great thing about the choice to become an advocate: anyone can make it.”

EFF Legal Director Corynne McSherry introduced honoree Stephanie Lenz. Lenz became a fair use hero when, with the assistance of EFF, she sued Universal Studios for sending her a takedown notice (taking advantage of the Digital Millennial Copyright Act) for a 29-second YouTube video of her kids dancing to Prince’s song “Let’s Go Crazy,” even though her video was legitimate fair use. The fight has taken ten years to win, but Lenz never gave up. “Stephanie Lenz is not most people. She decided to take another course. She decided to fight back,” said McSherry. In doing so, Lenz became a voice for thousands of users who have had their work taken down unfairly – and she made history. Lenz encouraged the audience to all become activists, “I could've chosen silence. I chose speech. Here's the great thing about the choice to become an advocate: anyone can make it.”

Corynne McSherry and Stephanie Lenz, winner for her fight for fair use.

Danny O’Brien introduced the next honoree, Joe McNamee, and humorously praised his humility, stating that McNamee only agreed to accept the award if he could do so on behalf of his colleagues. True to his word, O’Brien presented the award to McNamee and the European community. “Anyone know who that guy is?” quipped McNamee.

Danny O'Brien and Joe McNamee, winner for his work with European Digital Rights.

McNamee is Executive Director of European Digital Rights, Europe’s association for organizations supporting online freedom. From his home base of Brussels, he pioneered digital rights advocacy in Europe with his work in net neutrality and General Data Protection Regulation or GDPR, and notably, was a centralizing force for diverse groups from politicians to activists to come together. McNamee shared his concern for the copyright directive and the problems that arise from companies implementing policies on a global level. He also asked the audience to go home and watch the video of Taren Stinebricker-Kauffman speaking on the banality of evil during her acceptance speech for Aaron Swartz’s posthumous Pioneer Award, “And when you watch that video, be outraged that it's truer today than it was a few years ago. Be proud that you're part of a community that does not accept this banality. And be energized by your outrage to fight the good fight.”

EFF Director of International Free Expression Jillian York presented the evening's last award over live video from Thessaloniki in Greece to Sarah T. Roberts, who was in Greece keynoting a conference on content moderation. Roberts spoke of the hidden labor and the experiences of the workers in content moderation – which is largely invisible – and hoped the award would help “elevate the profile and elevate the experience to these workers that have been hidden for so long.” Roberts’ research on content moderation has been vital in documenting and informing how social media companies use low-wage laborers to the detriment of free expression and the health and well-being of the screeners.

Jillian C. York and Sarah T. Roberts, winner for her commercial content moderation work, LIVE FROM GREECE!

We are deeply grateful to Anna Barlow, Amelia Barlow, Daniel Ellsberg, and all of this year’s honorees for their contributions in the digital world and far beyond. This was truly an ideal group to rededicate the Pioneer Awards Ceremony to a visionary like John Perry Barlow.

Awarded every year since 1992, EFF’s Pioneer Awards Ceremony recognizes the leaders who are extending freedom and innovation on the electronic frontier. Honorees are nominated by the public. Previous honorees have included Aaron Swartz, Douglas Engelbart, Richard Stallman, and Anita Borg. Many thanks to the sponsors of the 2018 Pioneer Awards Ceremony: Anonyome Labs; Dropbox; Gandi.net; Ridder, Costa & Johnstone LLP; and Ron Reed. If you or your company are interested in learning more about sponsorship, please contact nicole@eff.org.

The 2018 Barlows revealed!

from Deeplinks https://ift.tt/2QPE6i0

[oct2pus]

killed my desktop lmao

[oct2pus]

currently gotten the GTK and openbox themes edited. I might post a github for it but its kinda shody (only a lot of very obvious things are recolored to be that lovable #4bec13). I can’t figure out how to change the lights on plank (those icons on the bottom left, its like an MAC OS dock) to a different color so rip. I’m not looking forward to writing a conky clock.

[oct2pus]

have i mentioned finding decent linux discussion that doesn’t have gross shit like this is a real fucking effort.

[oct2pus]

it could use a new desktop background but ive managed to get get mate looking in a way i like it, if only i could have my openbox keybinds I’d be happy.

[oct2pus]

honestly i3 is so good i was having some doubts but its very nice to multitask blogging, discord, and watching netflix at the same time. on one screen.