Information in the computer age is the last genuine free market left on earth except those free markets where indigenous people are still surviving (Russell Means)

Some of the surviving nations in North America have tried Casinos and call centers. Others have tried meat packing for freedom. Yet, unemployment remains high, over 80% for some communities, such as on the Lakotah reservations. Similarly, per capita income often remains below the poverty line. On the Lakotah reservations, per capita income is less than $4,000 annually. The exact story is of course different for each nation, but the overall results of these efforts have usually been rather bleak.

Could free software change things?

Again in the case of Intellivision, much like so many other of its “partners” (including Sendo), Microsoft demonstrates that their business model is based primarily on fraudulent and deceptive business practices. This is a company that finds it easier to use and control other people’s ideas rather than introduce their own, and often tries to claim privileged use of existing ideas by patenting other people’s existing and published works. To this they seem to now have gone head first into using IPR, the “Intellectual Protection Racket”.

I have noticed many of our sister free software projects have recently incorporated features commonly associated with Bayonne. Asterisk 1.4, for example, introduces a native scripting language. The excellent community fork of Asterisk, OpenPBX, had planned to use embedded io for this purpose.

As we prepared to open a new Freedom Technology Center in a rehabilitated site in New Jersey, I came to learn that Verizon was capable of offering fiber service at our location. Officially, they only claim to support those using Microsoft Windows and Mac OS/X with their service. In fact, with a little foreknowledge, you can have installed, activated, and use your FiOS service with an entirely free operating system such as GNU/Linux.

Imagine you are in the boardroom, asked by the president of the company to fix his laptop during a critical presentation. You reach for your handy knoppix on a flash, and set it off to boot, so ready to proudly display the power of freedom during this critical presentation, when, already too late, you remember; that darn startup sound!

Robin Miller recently published a story on Newsforge about "Stan"[1], as an example of a situation that demonstrates proprietary software is a danger to business continuity. I found this story interesting since I think Mr. Miller came close to correctly identifying a core issue, which is that the proprietary software business model as it exists today both facilitates and encourages vendors to act in bad faith. However, it did not need to have been this way, and really comes down to misuse of licensing along with some deliberate abuse and exploitation of existing commercial law.

With the draft of the GNU General Public License Version 3 (GPLv3) have come many interesting comments, although not all of which I have found positive. While I understand proprietary vendors have offered complaints against a license they do not even use, I was surprised that Linus Torvalds had taken some issues which I thought were in any case misguided criticisms.

With the introduction of the GNU GPLv3, the GNU Lesser General Public License (L-GPL) has seen much less attention. This has changed with the recent GPLv3 conference in Barcelona, and I think it has changed for the better.

I read an interesting article in LinuxJournal on setting up thin clients recently. I have always liked the idea of having a server and using X in one of the ways it was originally meant to be used, but so far, no article has offered a clear idea how to integrate and support serving a mixed environment of thin clients and traditional desktop or laptop machines together conveniently.

Those who currently struggle to maintain what is called “Net Neutrality” on the internet I think have taken too limited an approach to their struggle. What they ask is to maintain an existing status quo that had already been eroded from the original promise and potential of the internet against those who wish to change it even further. This to me leaves for a poor negotiating position when congress loves to bridge difference with half measures, and even limited compromise between the current status quo and proposed changes would still be disastrous.