yes, not only that but I'm getting bored by people pretending they're doing anything good just because they've (finally) realized that using non-free software suffers from collaterals
I'm bored by people pretending they've gone free just because they managed to replace OSX with some exotic gnu/linux distro (and with exotic I mean whatever which isn't mainstream)
And I'm bored by people upvothing posts like this
And I know someone will tell is me who is wrong (and boring) but listen, that is just your opinion, as this is mine. One thing isn't opinionable though, svbtle isn't free, so this post really isn't a good one, for me
And if your story is about "how you reinstalled some random gnu/linux", well that is a 20 years old story; what is an hacker (news reader) interested in? the .Xmodmap settings?
The fight for freedom today seems to me to have been moved for the great part somewhere else, on the webapps. How about we "return to freedom" by debating on how we get rid of all these non-free web applications?
sure it is better than doing nothing, except in my perception HN isn't a place for average non-tech guys so I get bored by this kind of posts
About me, I'm planning (and practicing) not to release any non-free code and also looking for alternatives to a few web apps which I'm still unable to replace (as per first post). That would be a much nicer topic to discuss for me.
Installing gnu/linux, no really. Again that is 20years old story.
> sure it is better than doing nothing, except in my perception HN isn't a place for average non-tech guys so I get bored by this kind of posts
I agree. There's a lot of avoidance of criticism for fear of "negativity" on HN. Not only does this hurt the (very positive) constructive criticism by regression-to-the-mean, it also causes us to lower our collective bar, from a "collection of smart people" into something more average.
The only non-free software I can't find a replacement for is a good sound/wave editor, something with an intuitive interface. Audacity's navigation controls are just terrible.
indeed that is what in these days I would consider interesting and eventually title "Returning to Free Software" ... have you got experiences to share on the matter?
And speaking about practical solutions, I know of identi.ca and libre.fm , do you know of others?
Ah thanks. Yeah Crunchbang might look exotic now but I think it is an up and comer. It is currently #16 here http://distrowatch.com/ just above Slackware and basically offers a minimal UI on top of Debian.
Svbtle, while not free software, is on my domain, and Dustin will give a dump of my data at any time.
There is some level of irony, but this isn't about being a zealot. I have enough control over Svbtle for my needs. Blogging software is way different than my operating system.
The "point" of FSM. Watch RMS's talks. Sure they're a bit ranty, but if you're going to claim to "use as much free software" as possible then actually do it.
That means gNewSense (or whatever else is FSF approved) and no proprietary drivers.
If you're going to umm and ahh about this then don't be misleading, just say you're moving to open source, not free software.
This kind of post is counter-productive. If someone is starting to use more free software, it's very discouraging when people start getting nitpicky about stuff like binary blobs. Yes, a distro without that stuff is technically more free (and safer from spying governments), but let people come one step at a time. By switching to a GNU/Linux distro, steveklabnik is much better off than he was.
Sure, I agree, but when you refer to the distro if you're going to go to the lengths of specifically calling it GNU/Linux, then specifically call is an open alternative rather than a free alternative.
Except you don't say moving towards, you say returning, which I'm guessing is also wrong because you never used "as much free software as possible" before.
Sorry, 'moving towards' is how I've been describing it, but the title did end up 'returning.'
To be clear: this is a process. You can't do it all in one day. I have different priorities for different bits of software. Other than Ghostery, all the software on my machine is Free. Web services are a much trickier issue, and frankly, I'm more concerned about my usage of Gmail than I am Svbtle.
An awesome free-software webmail client is something that is sorely missing. sup or notmuch serve my needs well for a console e-mail client with good search/labels/conversations/etc., but most people are understandably going to want webmail. Many of the other google apps (calendar) need decent free software replacements too.
> An awesome free-software webmail client is something that is sorely missing.
Roundcube[0] has a nice list of features and a decent UI. As we (an ISP) move our mail infrastructure from Windows to Linux, we intend to replace our current (proprietary) webmail client with Roundcube.
I haven't tried it but, in theory, you should even be able to use Roundcube as a front-end for Gmail. You'd have to host it yourself (unless you find a misconfigured installation somewhere that you can "hijack") and point it at Google's IMAP servers but it should work (although I'm not sure how well).
No. If your blog post is anything to go by, almost none of the software on your machine is Free. Especially your OS!
Every program must fulfill the following requirements:
The freedom to run the program, for any purpose (freedom 0).
The freedom to study how the program works, and change it so it does your computing as you wish (freedom 1). Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor (freedom 2).
The freedom to distribute copies of your modified versions to others (freedom 3). By doing this you can give the whole community a chance to benefit from your changes. Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
If you can listen to an MP3 on your machine, chances are it is using a licensed codec, breaking freedom 3. If anything more restrictive than GNU GPL is used for any of the hardware drivers then it is in breach of freedom 1!
Sorry, I am very confused. Debian only includes Free Software in their repositories, right? I'm even using Iceweasel over Firefox. That's one reason I chose it in the first place.
EDIT: checking my sources.list, I do have an additional Crunchbang-specific source. So it's possible that has non-free software in it, I guess.
So, I'm wondering: are you using a Lemote? If so, why not? You seem quite... passionate about absolutism on this issue.
See, this is what people like me who have been using exclusively OSS (and FOSS) for years have had to deal with! ;)
P.S. Don't forget to enable SELinux. :)
Edit: To be fair to your co-debater, by using open-source software with minor exceptions here and there (unFree firmware in the kernel, a smattering of non-Free software, patent-protected multimedia drivers, etc.) is in the mind of Free Software activists kind of like saying that you should have strong privacy rights, except perhaps for a little bit of metadata here and there, maybe some quibbling about analysis/capture just to make it easier on everyone. Why be a zealot about one of those but not about the other?
I personally believe people are free to choose what to be activists about but that's the perspective I see.
I'd suggest that either you: a) actually list free software alternatives in this post or b) remove any reference to free software at all and replace it with whatever you want (open source has a pretty flippant definition, so perhaps that would be the best option)
And no I don't use a Leemote, nor do I use Linux or any free software at all. However I do recognize the FSF and its beliefs and people who misrepresent them annoy me. Someone will come along and read your blog and believe that the set up really is Free Software, write a blog post of their own, probably skewing the definition even more. Where does is stop. Why does no-one do research anymore!
I wasn't suggesting you don't get it. I was just highlighting a contradiction, although one that I think illustrates a point; that there is generally a tradeoff between freedom and convenience. Different people have different levels of expertise, amounts of time and tolerance of inconvenience that influences their software choices.
One other point, in the article you say:
The PRISM debacle of the last week confirmed my fears and reasoning, and so I made the decision to accelerate the schedule.
If it is government spying you are worried about then using non-free web apps is surely a much greater risk than non-free native software. At least you can stick a proxy in front of your Windows box and block/monitor where it is connecting to and what data it sends. With web apps your data could have been siphoned off to some NSA data centre without you ever knowing about it.
Also I find it mildly depressing that being able to retrieve your own data is seen as the mark of a really 'free and open' webapp. Even with the most proprietary of native software I typically still control my data. Webapps took us a step backwards in that regard and partial reversal on that front is not a sign of great progress, it's a sign that we are struggling to even maintain the status quo.
Steve, great post, but you know that Ghostery's function is a part of Adblock Plus? Just add EasyList and EasyPrivacy and disable Fanboy's.
The company that makes Ghostery is cool but alas, it's nice to keep bloat away from the browser. I'd also recommend checking out Firefox Aurora or Nightly instead of Iceweasel.
