NotesFree software can’t solve the power imbalance between users and software makers alone by giving to the former the possibility to run, study, and distribute both original and modified copies. Such approach fails to acknowledge that the problems we face with proprietary software go beyond technological aspects, and that is possible to easily reproduce toxic patterns within open projects. Collaborative efforts take a lot more than just making the code available to anyone, being primarily based on human interactions and emotional labor.Unfurl
NotesFirefox today reminds me of Firefox when I first discovered it. Mozilla has once again delivered a technically superior product while completely respecting my rights as a user. Firefox is freedom.Unfurl
Notes"You may be running non-free programs on your computer every day without realizing it—through your web browser.Many sites still use Javascript that way, but some use it for major programs that do large jobs. For instance, Google Docs downloads into your machine a Javascript program which measures half a megabyte, in a compacted form that we could call Obfuscript because it has no comments and hardly any whitespace, and the method names are one letter long. The source code of a program is the preferred form for modifying it; the real source code of this program is not available to the user."Unfurl
Notes"Vienna is a freeware, open source RSS/Atom newsreader for the Mac OS X operating system. It provides features comparable to commercial newsreaders, but both it and the source code are freely available for download."Unfurl
Notes"Do ... 1. Get a Benevolent Dictator ... 2. Make the Program Usable In Its Default State ... 3. Design Around Tasks ... 4. Write a Plug-In Architecture ... 5. User Testing, User Testing, User Testing!!"Unfurl
NotesThe story of the Linksys Wireless-G Router (model WRT54G) and how you can turn a $60 router into a $600 router is a little bit CSI and a little bit Freaks & Geeks.Unfurl
Notes"Keep releasing your work to the world, we love it, really we do, but the software world has certain ways of doing things, and it would be nice if you followed a few of the existing conventions…"Unfurl
Notes"If you haven't been paying attention to GNU grep recently, you should be happily surprised by some of the new features and options that have come about with the 2.5 series."Unfurl
Notes"Sam Hocevar found conclusive evidence that part of XCP’s code was copied from a program called DRMS, which he co-authored with DVD Jon and released under the terms of the GPL open source license."Unfurl
Mu License