The philosophy of #freesoftware http://t.co/t5lg7Siw4r

Free Download Daemon Tools Pro Advanced 5.3 Full Version http://t.co/ngokCbexMz #software #freesoftware #fullversion

RT @ProphecyEnt: Listen 2 Mi (Riot Squad Riddim) @djcollage ❂♢♪ http://t.co/vXhc0cbbn4 ♪♢❂@ProphecyEnt #Dancehall #Promo | #Ad : http://t.c…

RT @ProphecyEnt: Listen 2 Mi (Riot Squad Riddim) @djcollage ❂♢♪ http://t.co/vXhc0cbbn4 ♪♢❂@ProphecyEnt #Dancehall #Promo | #Ad : http://t.c…

Listen 2 Mi (Riot Squad Riddim) @djcollage ❂♢♪ http://t.co/vXhc0cbbn4 ♪♢❂@ProphecyEnt #Dancehall #Promo | #Ad : http://t.co/Hv71nUWR19

There are now 68 public comments listed on the FTC's website on the topic of patent trolls. Patent Progress's David Balko's article, The End-Users Strike Back, notes that a surprising number are from end users, defined as "retailers, financial services, grocery stores, advertising, hotel industries, and even oil companies [who] are coming out in droves to fight abusive patent troll tactics":Patent trolls have started to target end-users, especially small companies, because they typically lack the expertise, experience and ability to fight questionable claims. Litigation costs can quickly mount up to $250,000 to $500,000, and reach millions if the case goes all the way through trial (not to mention appeals). End-users also have to deal with disruptions to their business from discovery requests and managing the litigation. Often companies are forced to divulge secret financial and technical information as well as divert key personnel from their work to participate in depositions and give testimony. Patent trolls, on the other hand, have few costs in pursuing a suit because they do not operate in any market. The lawsuit has no disruptive effect on the patent troll's business because it is the patent troll's business. You may enjoy going through them, but I thought you might like to see one of the more thoughtful of the public comments, the one from Ken Wasch [PDF], President of the Software & Information Industry Association, or SIIA, a trade association for the software industry with 700 plus members, because it provides details on how the patent trolls attack and what the results have been. I don't see members listed on the site, but the Software Board lists a number of companies, including Red Hat and IBM, and a number of smaller companies. And the comment states that trolls are hindering innovation, being "masters at abusing and manipulating the patent system." The footnotes alone are worth noting, but the really interesting part is how the comment explains how trolls do what they do. I learned something I've long wondered about, why trolls hide who they are in litigation.

Jono has written a very good post on his blog about respect in the community. I agree with the importance of respect in a community. It was also important to clarify that having different opinions or perspectives are not a sign of disrespect and are very important in a community even if consent cannot always be found. That is life, but not issuing different perspectives will disadvantage a community.

However, respect is a two-directional proposition. It is difficult to maintain respect, if every time there is a disagreement and passion creates tension, it is the fault of the community. In particular the vast differences in power create different points of breaking points and hence it sometimes may be far too easy to make comparisons on an equal level, or use objective tests to try to rationalise or use relativism. Pontifications of cult leaders rarely lead to respect, more often it is rather dissension or fear that are the result. This post is not supposed to in any way contradict the points Jono made in his blog post, but rather add another perspective to it.

This week's episode is brief and is the first after the close of the production suspension. A rough transcript is presented below for the avoidance of doubt.

Download here (MP3) (ogg) (FLAC), or subscribe to the podcast (MP3) to have episodes delivered to your media player. We suggest subscribing by way of a service like gpodder.net.

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/us/.

And we're back...

Welcome to the Burning Circle. The production suspension has now concluded. For release on Monday, May 20th, this is episode 113.

I have sent to the e-mail list and posted elsewhere a notes update to bring everybody up to speed as to what is going on. I will not reiterate it here. If you need a link to it you will be able to find such in Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter 317. You are subscribed to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter, aren't you?

We've had three folks attempt to join our community. I have disapproved two already and one remains in the pool. As a rule of thumb, I do ask that if I e-mail you that you please respond to me within a week. Within that amount of time, even a postcard can reach me via the United States Postal Service. Two people seeking to join did not contact me within a week's time and after multiple e-mails greeting them. One person remains in the queue with four day left to say something even if it is to tell me to go away. As a local community we have to be about more than just collecting a stylized Ohio flag logo on your Launchpad page. My biggest fear is that that has been the case a couple hundred times already.

We're heading into the Saucy Salamander cycle. We're way, way too quiet across the state. We have a mailing list. We have an IRC channel. We have a voicemail drop box to contact the leader. We need to speak up more as a community.

From the south shores of Lake Erie in the border port community of Ashtabula Township, this program has been brought to you over the facilities of the Internet Archive and Ubuntu Ohio by Erie Looking Productions. Our producer, Gloria "The Half Million Dollar Woman" Kellat, remains on medical leave. Our owner and engineer is Mike Kellat. I am the head writer, Stephen Michael Kellat. This program is released under a Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike 3.0 United States license.

Thank you for joining us.

Why pay for it unless you have to: Free alternatives to essential business software http://t.co/Wr7ThaihI7 #freesoftware

There may not be a native solution, but Google Music All Access is available in Ubuntu 13.04 today as a web app.

Turn On Notifications

To fully enjoy the Google music experience, notifications should be present. I am only going to turn on notifications within Chrome but you may explore a more intimate integration at this webupd8 blog post.

The first step is to load Google Music using the Chrome browser. I am using the beta version 27.0.1453.81. Press the setting button located in the upper right quadrant of the browser window and select Music Labs.

Find Desktop Notifications from the list and click enable.

Add Google Music as a Web App

Although you may run this directly from the Chrome browser, the secret to an enhanced user experience is adding Google Music as a Ubuntu web app. For the details on how to accomplish this see; Ubuntu – A Replacement for Chrome OS.

Enroll In Google Music All Access

You can stream music in your library to any device or computer via a browser on which you’re signed in. You can also download music in your library to any authorized device or computer. You can authorize up to a total of ten (10) devices or computers at any one time. At this time, only two Google accounts per computer can be used to add music with the Google Play Music Manager.

Click the Try It Free for 30 Days button to begin your registration. For your awareness a list of Authorized devices will be displayed for your consideration and you will be prompted to enter credit card payment info.

Start Playing Music

Ubuntu Integration

Enjoy : )

The post Ubuntu 13.04 – Enable Google Music All Access appeared first on j-Baer.

10 Years of #OpenSource Initiative #libresoftware #floss #freesoftware http://t.co/HeL3aCCvmp

The WTFPL (Do What the Fuck You Want to Public License) https://t.co/gQoaKW0KzF #FreeSoftware

Recently there was yet another storm in a teacup that distracted us from creating and sharing Ubuntu and our flavors with others. I am not going to dive into the details of this particular incident…it has been exhaustively documented elsewhere…but at the heart of this case was a concern around the conduct in which some folks engaged around something they disagreed with. This is not the first time we have seen disappointing conduct in a debate, and I wanted to share some thoughts on this too.

In every community I have worked in I have tried to build an environment in which all view points that challenge decisions or decision makers are welcome with the requirement that they are built on a platform of respectful discourse; this is the essence of our Code Of Conduct. Within the context of an Open Source community we also encourage this engagement around differences to be expressed as solutions with a focus on solving problems; this helps us to be productive and move the project forward. This is why we have such a strong emphasis on blueprints, specs, bugs, and other ways of expressing issues and exploring solutions.

Within the context of this most recent issue I saw three problems (problems I have seen present in other similar arguments too):

1. Irrespective of the voracity or content of an opinion we must never forget to be respectful and polite in the way we express and engage with others. Respect must always be present in our discourse, irrespective of the content of our opinions; without it we become a barbaric people and lose the magic that brought this wonderful set of minds together in the first place. There is simply no excuse for rudeness, and inflammatory FUD that has no evidence to back it up other than presumed ill-intent serves nothing but to demotive folks and ratchet up the flames, as opposed to resolve the issue and make things better.
2. Trust needs to be earned, but trust should always be built within the wider context of a set of contributions and conduct. Unfortunately some folks consider decisions they disagree with to be a basis for (a) entering into a paranoid debate about the “real reason” the individual or company made that decision (and typically not believing the rationale provided by said decision-maker) and (b) seemingly forgetting about all the other positive contributions that the person or company has contributed. I can assure you there is no nefarious scheme at place at Canonical; our goals are well known in the community. If I felt Canonical was fundamentally trying to demote and shut the community out, I wouldn’t work here; I have no interest in working for a company that doesn’t understand the value of community, and I am not worried about finding suitable employment elsewhere. I work at Canonical because I believe our goals with Ubuntu are just and the company’s commitment to our community is sincere.
3. Ubuntu is not a consensus-based community. Consensus communities rarely work, and I am not aware of any Open Source project that bases their work on wider consensus in the community. It would be impossible and impractical to notify our community of every decision we make, let alone try to base a decision on a majority view, but we do try to ensure that major changes are communicated to our leaders first (this is something we have been driving improvements in recently). We always need to find the right balance between transparency and JFDI, and sometimes the balance isnt’t quite there, but that does not mean there is some kind of illuminati-ish scheme going on behind the scenes.

Ubuntu is a community filled with passionate people, and I love that we have folks who are critical of our direction and decisions. If everyone agreed with what we are doing, we would not always make the right decisions, and our diversity is what makes Ubuntu and our flavors such a great place to participate.

As I said at the beginning of this post, it is important that all viewpoints are welcome, but we have to get the tone and conduct of some of these debates under control. The sheer level of sensationalist and confrontational language that is often in place in these disagreements doesn’t serve anyone but hungry journalists looking for page hits.

Now, I am not suggesting here that anyone should change any of their viewpoints. If you vehemently disagree with an aspect of what we are doing in Ubuntu or at Canonical, that is fine and of course, welcome. What I am appealing to everyone though is to treat others like you wish to be treated, with respect and dignity, and lets keep the sensationalism out of our community and focus on what we do best…building a world-class Free Software platform and its rich ecosystem of flavors.

gNewSense has a beta release 3.0 Parkes!! So glad to see this! #FSF #libre #freesoftware #gnewsense http://t.co/2QpN2K9NWf

Un film libero! Completato Project London #open #opensource #free #freesoftware #sapevatelo http://t.co/c3YDjDl88M

Linux code is the 'benchmark of quality,' study concludes: http://t.co/4mFw2eR0iE #linux #freesoftware

10 Years of #OpenSource #softwarelibre #floss #freesoftware http://t.co/PezT8Rblyt

@cvilbrandt First one's free. So are all the others. #Linux #FreeSoftware

これで Beamer で作ったスライドを Keynote に変換するということをして乗り切ろうか考え中．Keynote の使い方が一向に分からない．http://t.co/F8QztcrzqC

@panaggio Of course there is source code, but are they allowed to publish it under a FreeSoftware license? // cc @FairPhone