Ryan Tomayko

dtach —

Not sure how I never heard of this program before:

dtach is a tiny program that emulates the detach feature of screen, allowing you to run a program in an environment that is protected from the controlling terminal and attach to it later. dtach does not keep track of the contents of the screen, and thus works best with programs that know how to redraw themselves. dtach does not, however, have the other features of screen, such as its support of multiple terminals or its terminal emulation support. This makes dtach extremely tiny compared to screen, making it more easily audited for bugs and security holes, and also allows it to fit in environments where space is limited, such as on rescue disks.

GitHub has rake tasks that use dtach to manage redis and maybe some other things.

A Big Change for Open Source —

Bruce Perens on the recent JMRI/GPL ruling:

“For a decade there’d been questions: Are Open Source licenses enforceable at all? Are their terms, calling for a patent detente or disclosure of source code, legal? Are they contracts, which require agreement by all parties to be valid, or licenses, which are binding even if you don’t agree to then? What legal penalties can a Free Software developer employ: only token damages, or much more? The court’s ruling makes the answers to these clear. Did such weighty questions come up in cases involving IBM, Sun, HP, or Red Hat? No, this is the quirky world of Free Software: it was a court case about model trains.”

Court: violating copyleft = copyright infringement —

“Unlike the lower court, the appeals court seemed to understand that reciprocity lay at the heart of free software licenses. Just as traditional software firms thrive on the exchange of code for money, free software projects thrive on the exchange of code for code.”

GPL workarounds —

“Ten months later the company dies from a sudden buffer overflow.”

Freedom 0 —

Ahh, those were the days… What’s left to fight for?

GNUpdf —

“The goal of the GNU PDF project is to develop and provide a free, high-quality, complete and portable set of libraries and programs to manage the PDF file format, and associated technologies. ”

ZFS Puts Net App Viability at Risk? —

Schwartz: “… we will be going after sizable monetary damages. And I am committing that Sun will donate half of those proceeds to the leading institutions promoting free software and patent reform, and to the legal defense of free software innovators.”

GNU Coreutils ChangeLog

GNU Readline ChangeLog —

CHANGES

Sun joins the Free Software Foundation —

Bravo.

You write free software, therefore you... write free software. —

“The thing that unites the free software developers, and the only thing that unites us, is that we make free software.”

2006: The year the Free Software Foundation reached out to the community —

Interesting look at how the FSF is picking up a more activist role with tech. politics and policy. Mentions the GPL v3 process, BadVista.org, and the anti-DRM site, Defective By Design.

The Problem of Open Source in the Microsoft World —

I’m sorry but it is just baffling to me how developers and cough evangelists can put up with this kind of behavior as being the sort-of default mode of operation at MS. The company needs to consider massive sweeping changes in the way they treat develop

GPL Java: An interview with lead Kaffe developer Dalibor Topic —

Good perspective on Java going GPL.

Free software is a weak mode of production | Free Software Magazine —

“The success of GNU/Linux and other free software projects is annoying.”

Linux is Not Windows —

Lot’s of things I’ve wanted to say in here…

The Free Software Definition - GNU Project - Free Software Foundation (FSF) —

Just wanted to link to this because it pisses me off that download.com is the first hit in a google search for “Free Software”. Bha!

Patent absurdity —

Stallman on the EU software patent mess.

The History of the GNU General Public License —

“What led Stallman to the creation of this copyleft license was his experience with James Gosling, creator of NeWs and the Java programming language, and UniPress, over Emacs.”

Emacs as Cargo —

Came across this odd section in a “leaving Emacs for vi” document and it has a really interesting description of the history of FSF/GNU, Linux, and the evolution of Free Software. Seems out of place in this document but is worth reading.

Brazil: Free Software's Biggest and Best Friend —

Brazil gets it. They could be the international version of Silicon Valley in the next five years…

A Sneak Peek at GNOME 2.10 —

Looks like a nice little upgrade..

MilkMint GTK2 Theme (for GNOME) —

A nice and simple theme for GTK2/GNOME desktop environments (click thumbnail image to see larger screenshot).

Experimental Culture —

A look at the past, present, and possible future of GNOME culture.

GNU make Manual —

All on one page :)

Why the term 'intellectual property' is a seductive mirage —

Stallman..

GNOME: We've overtaken Windows, bring on Apple —

Title is a bit misleading. GNOME feels they have reached Windows' level of functionality (I’d agree) and are now shooting to bring the featureset in line with Apple’s OS X.

The Right to Read - Richard Stallman —

“Like everyone, he had been taught since elementary school that sharing books was nasty and wrong—something that only pirates would do.”