Category Archives: Free Software

Free Software news and views.

The business cost of making non-free hip.

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Apple recently announced that they are redesigning and redeploying the mainboard for their latest notebook computer, the MacBook Pro. It’s worth putting this in some context so you can see how sad the situation really is for Apple users here.

Apple’s hardware is a collection of cherry-picked parts. Apple decides what hardware they want to “support” (since their OS is non-free, calling this real support is simply not true) and they determine when this “support” ends (according to Apple Newton users, Apple isn’t interested in sharing information about their hardware, even for machines that aren’t being sold anymore). The MacBook Pro revisions happen without much publicity. This particular mainboard was recently at revision D and is now up to revision F according to a post on digg.com.

So when Apple says If your 15-inch MacBook Pro emits a high-pitched buzzing sound, please contact AppleCare for service, one wonders how things came to be this way.

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What’s wrong with Microsoft’s core fonts?

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Recently some work was done with the GNOME logo and it was clear that the GNOME logo artists had chosen a non-free font—Trebuchet MS—for the text. The same critique applies to all of what were once known as the Microsoft “Core Fonts”. Microsoft no longer distributes these fonts but others have distributed copies under their license which allows verbatim non-commercial reproduction and distribution.

Trebuchet can be redistributed so long as one redistributes it in its CAB file (there is a free software program to extract the fonts from the CAB file). This is not a reason why the Trebuchet MS font is non-free.

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Is Intel’s 965 chipset going to be your next video hardware?

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Intel releases source code to drive its upcoming video hardware under the MIT license (a non-copylefted free software license). Here’s a list of the hardware you can use with this software (these are the video cards to choose from when buying your next video card, laptop, or desktop machine):

Short name Full name
965G G965 Integrated Graphics Controller
965Q Q963/Q965 Integrated Graphics Controller
946GZ 946GZ/GL Integrated Graphics Controller
945G 945G Integrated Graphics Controller
945GM Mobile 945GM/GMS/940GML Express Integrated Graphics Controller
915G 82915G/GV/910GL Express Chipset Family Graphics Controller
915G 82915G Express Chipset Family Graphics Controller
915GM Mobile 915GM/GMS/910GML Express Graphics Controller
865G 82865G Integrated Graphics Controller
855GM 82852/855GM Integrated Graphics Device
852GM 82852/855GM Integrated Graphics Device
845G 82845G/GL[Brookdale-G]/GE Chipset Integrated Graphics Device
i830M 82830 Chipset Graphics Controller
815 82815 Chipset Graphics Controller
810 82810 Chipset Graphics Controller
810-DC100 82810-M DC-100 System and Graphics Controller

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When co-optation is called “rival[rous]”, where is user’s software freedom?

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Mark Shuttleworth, owner of Canonical (which publishes the popular Ubuntu GNU/Linux system), recently gave an interview to More4 News in which Shuttleworth is said to be a “rival” to Microsoft.

The interview is available exclusively in Windows Media.

In order to see the interview on Ubuntu GNU/Linux one must

  • run an i386-compatible build of Ubuntu GNU/Linux
  • install the proprietary Windows Media codecs

That doesn’t strike me as a rivalrous relationship. It strikes me as Microsoft dictating terms and Ubuntu GNU/Linux users being asked to take on those terms regardless of what they are.

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Tonight’s show is my last on WEFT 90.1 FM

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For years I’ve hosted Digital Citizen on WEFT 90.1 FM in Champaign, Illinois, first during overnight programming and then during primetime. I’m leaving WEFT and hosting my final episode of Digital Citizen there tonight. Bad managerial decisions have compelled me to leave the station. It’s been my privilege to bring you news about what’s going on with free expression in the digital age. Digital Citizen isn’t going away; I’ll continue covering Free Software movement news and views on this blog.

From 8-10PM (UTC-5:00) tonight, my brother-in-law Nathan Owens will join me in the studio. Together we’ll cover a variety of topics in tech news and take your calls (217-FLY-LIVE or 217-359-5483).

Later this evening we’ll hear from:

Wikipedia is the next to cave into non-freedom?

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In the past Jimmy “Jimbo” Wales has been quite vocal about using exclusively free and open codecs for Wikipedia. One would think that this extends to media storage and broadcast as well: The previous Wikimania was broadcast online in Ogg Theora+Vorbis (a free and open video and audio codec playable on all platforms through a variety of players including VideoLAN Client, Totem, Helix Player, mplayer, and Xine). The recordings were archived in this format as well. One could play these files without bumping into patent encumberances or using proprietary software.

Not so today; apparently, Wikimania ’06 will be broadcast exclusively in RealMedia. RealMedia is a proprietary format one must use proprietary software to play. This encourages users to give up their software freedom—the freedom to run, share, and modify their software for any purpose at any time. Regardless of which front-end one uses (mplayer, “Real Alternative”, etc.) one cannot escape installing and running proprietary software to see this conference.

Wikimania purports to be about “provid[ing] an opportunity for Wikimedians and the general public alike to meet and share ideas about free and open source software”.

For Wikimania, sharing ideas about FLOSS requires using proprietary software. This might not be a big deal for the Open Source movement which isn’t very critical of proprietary software, but for the Free Software movement which eschews non-free software, this is remarkable.

What happened in the intervening year? Is Wikipedia giving up on using exclusively free and open codecs and formats?

Update 2006-09-11: No, Wikimania isn’t entirely giving up on free formats and codecs, they’re just treating freedom as a second-class citizen; an option to consider when a proprietary and/or patent-encumbered file isn’t available first.

Check out the Wikimania 2006 archives now and you’ll see a clear majority of the audio in MP3 format and video in some proprietary codec with a QuickTime wrapper. Ogg Vorbis audio and Ogg Vorbis+Theora audio+video files are few and far between. Jimbo’s essay (above) would give you the idea that Wikipedia would either focus exclusively on free codecs, formats, and files, or possibly offer proprietary and encumbered files as an alternative only where a free version existed.

Ubuntu GNU/Linux tells you who their friends are.

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“Ubuntu will always be free, and will not have restrictive licenses associated with it.” (so you don’t think I’m making this up: Opera press release, Ubuntu GNU/Linux press release on the web, Ubuntu GNU/Linux press release PDF file).

Here, “free” really means gratis (free as in cost, not free as in freedom) because Opera is proprietary software. Users are not free to inspect or modify Opera (possibly not even share verbatim copies of Opera with their friends and neighbors non-commercially). The second part of the sentence (how Ubuntu GNU/Linux “will not have restrictive licenses associated with it”) is so obviously contradictory it’s laughable on its face.

It’s actions like this that help people better understand where Ubuntu GNU/Linux’s priorities are.

I’ll be interested to see how they reconcile this should they ever make a GNUbuntu; an all free software variant of their Ubuntu GNU/Linux distribution.

Update (2006-07-29): The Ubuntu GNU/Linux “Fridge” has an article on how Opera 9 installable “with a couple of clicks”. So, you can lose your freedom with just a couple of clicks. To show that Ubuntu’s representatives actually mean gratis, consider the next line:

Over the years the makers of Opera (also called Opera) have been very supportive of the GNU/Linux community.

Several versions of their browser have been available for us freedom lovers, especially for users on Apple’s PowerPC chips and even a .deb package for Debian on Sparc.

Opera has consistently used our community as a market by distributing their proprietary software for numerous GNU/Linux architectures. This isn’t celebrating freedom, it’s exploiting our community.

Security in secrecy?

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The BBC reports on a self-described “security” firm report which suggests running MacOS X instead of Microsoft Windows because so much “malware” runs on Microsoft Windows. Apparently, the question of software freedom was never considered.

MacOS X is not entirely free software. It’s a combination of free software and non-free software. There are many portions of that OS which are not free for users to inspect, share, or modify. Hence, by default, they are not trustworthy.

This logic seems to have escaped Sophos and the BBC doesn’t dare to question it when Sophos reaches their conclusion to recommend one master over another.

Furthermore, consider these tips from the BBC “Staying Safe Online” sidebar:

Use reputable anti-spyware programs such as AdAware or Spybot

Both of these programs are proprietary; how they work is a secret to be kept from the user, like with all proprietary programs. What they do on one’s Microsoft Windows installation is unknown except to the proprietor. By relying on them to tell the user that their computer is “safe”, the user is led to believe that one uninspectable, unsharable, and unmodifiable program can undo the ill effects of another uninspectable, unsharable, and unmodifiable program such as the programs which make up non-free operating systems.

Do not open e-mail messages that look suspicious

This is recommended because Outlook and Outlook Express, two proprietary email clients, will act on email that is being shown to the user without the user’s express permission to execute anything. In fact, Outlook Express, the more popular of the two proprietary clients has been known to act on email before the user selected it. In other words, these programs were written badly and ought to be fixed. But users are prohibited from fixing the programs themselves or getting anyone else to fix them.

One can avoid this problem by switching email programs to something that respects user’s freedoms, like Thunderbird if you want a graphical email reader or mutt for command-line users. But running these on top of a proprietary OS doesn’t completely solve the problem, although it is a significant step in the right direction.