Dave Mohyla is the president and founder of dtidata.com, a hard drive recovery facility based in Tampa, Florida.
TM: Where are you based? What does your company do?
DTI Data recovery is based in South Pasadena, Florida which is a suburb of Tampa. We have been here for over 10 years. We operate a bio-metrically secured class 100 clean room where we perform hard drive recovery on all types of hard disks, from laptop hard drives to multi drive RAID systems.
Since the very beginning, directories (of any kind) have had a very central role in the internet. (I have recently grown fond of Free Web Directory. Even Slashdot can be considered a directory: a collection of great news and invaluable user-generated comments. As far as software is concerned, doing a quick search on Google about software directories will return the free (as in freedom) software directories like Savannah, SourceForge, Freshmeat and so on, followed by shareware and freeware sites such as FileBuzz, PCWin Download Center and All Freeware (great if you're looking for shareware and freeware, but definitely less comprehensive than their free-as-in-freedom counterparts).
Mark Shuttleworth is the founder of Thawte, the first Certification Authority to sell public SSL certificates. After selling Thawte to Verisign, Mark moved on to training as an astronaut in Russia and visiting space. Once he got back he founded Ubuntu, the leading GNU/Linux distribution. He agreed on releasing a quick interview to Free Software Magazine.
I read David Jonathon's article Anybody Up To Writing Good Directory Software? the other day, which got me thinking about software directories in general. As David mentioned, many of the software directories one finds when doing a quick google search are free as in beer, not as in freedom. But what interests me is the software directories that already exist, providing a combination of both free as in beer software, and open source software. Sites such as Freeware Downloads and Shareware Download don't advertise themselves as providing free as in liberty software, but each of them have a good selection of open source software available... if you know where to look.
If you’ve ever spent hours at work doing mailings, cursed your printer for printing outside the lines on your labels, or moaned “There has got to be a better way to do this,” here’s the solution you’ve been looking for. Working smarter, not harder! Worldlabel.com, a manufacture of labels offers Open Office / Libre Office labels templates for downloading in ODF format which will save you time, effort, and (if you want) make really cool-looking labels
A little while ago, while talking in the #drupal mailing list, I showed my latest creation to one of the core developers there. His reaction was "Wow, I am always surprised what people use Drupal for". His surprise is somehow justified: I did create a site for a bunch of entertainers in Perth, a company set to use Drupal to take over the world with Entertainers.Biz.
Update: since writing this article, I have updated the system so that the whole booking process happens online. I will update the article accordingly!
More and more people are discovering free software. Many people only do so after weeks, or even months, of using it. I wonder, for example, how many Firefox users actually know how free Firefox really is—many of them realise that you can get it for free, but find it hard to believe that anybody can modify it and even redistribute it legally.
When the discovery is made, the first instinct is to ask: why do they do it? Programming is hard work. Even though most (if not all) programmers are driven by their higher-than-normal IQs and their amazing passion for solving problems, it’s still hard to understand why so many of them would donate so much of their time to creating something that they can’t really show off to anybody but their colleagues or geek friends.
Sure, anybody can buy laptops, and just program. No need to get a full-on lab or spend thousands of dollars in equipment. But... is that the full story?
It dawned on me the other day, as I was shopping for the dozens of gifts it seems I have to buy every December, that Santa Claus is the most successful open source project in history. (Bridget @ Illiterarty would agree with that). Santa Claus is essentially a marketing development that is embodied by everyone who stuffs a sock, gives a gift, hosts a dinner or wishes Merry Christmas over the holiday season.
When I first started thinking about Free Software Magazine, I was feeling enthusiastic about the dream. I had Dave, Gianluca, and Alan willing to help me, I had established members of the free software community willing to help me out, I had writers volunteering their time and energy for free, and I had a generous offer from OpenHosting for servers, all before I'd proved myself. There was a sense of excitement in the air, and I thought maybe, just maybe, I could make this work.
Comments
Let us know your further thoughts
There's been a lot of controversy over the recent release of the GPLv3. But what do you think? Do you think it's exactly what the free software movement needs? Do you think it has some problems? Or do you think it is not required and that the GPLv2 was fine without the changes? Please let us know your thoughts on the matter and give us a comment if you have anything further to add.
This tastes like crusade
I'm reading the license, but I haven't finishend yet.
Anyway, my opinion is that it pays more attention to terminology (maybe, it was a problem in GPLv2? I don't know!) and this is good. It's useful to take off every doubt, I think this is a headway.
However, in the first section, there is something that shouts against Microsoft-Novell's pact and this isn't a headway, unfortunately.
I hope that this license isn't made to run against this kind of pact, I hope that the main idea isn't to start a crusade against some colussuses because this is a back step, not a headway!
I trust in FSF and I prefer to don't think that this license represents the beginning of a crusade, but only the time will tell us the truth ...
... My opinion about the license? It's praiseworthy! :-)
I think that it is a great
I think that it is a great license. It closed up some loop holes and stops Microsoft from extorting money out of Linux Distributions under the pretense of IP violation. Tell us what patents they are Microsoft and we can fix them by invalidating them :-).
Stupidity is not an option. It is a way of life :P.
The actual 'problems'...
The poll lacks an intermediate answer between 'much needed' and 'good with problems' - in fact, it comes with some restrictions that were added by its increased specificities. Don't get me wrong, I think that it is a great improvement over GPLv2 - it's just that while GPLv2 allowed some leeway on interpretation that the code's copyright holder could address if asked about it (like, say, Linus Torvalds saying it's okay to use Linux as a firmware - TiVo - as long as modifications are given back), GPLv3 is much, much more specific - and as such, doesn't allow for any leeway. While in many case it's good that it's now more precise, one could still find oneself uncomfortable in that straight jacket - and may find the older, worn but more flexible GPLv2 preferable.
In most cases though, GPLv3 is the way to go.
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A computer is like air conditioning: it becomes useless when you open windows.
I agree - more poll options needed
I would have preferred to answer somewhere between the top two options. I think it's an improvement on GPL2 and closes some loopholes where needed but a "fantastic licence"? No, I don't think I'd go that far.
So I voted for option 2. What are the problems? IMHO they are less in the wording of the licence and more to do with the public relations side. It's not all the fault of the FSF though. Not everything written about GPL3 has been helpful. Inflammatory statements made (by others and by the FSF) in the early draft days have not been properly retracted or explained/built upon as appropriate.
I feel the average punter (by which I mean the average punter who gives a monkey's) has sometimes been left a little bewildered by the whole exercise. It's only recently that things have become a little clearer.
I'm not sure those are the types of "problems" meant by the poll option though. :o)
Ryan
Its a great licence,
Its a great licence, 'fantastic' may be putting it in a simply overemotional phrasing for a dreary legal text, but im fine with voting that way for it approximates my stance on it well.
the current microsoft-novell situation shows how this is a badly needed move, and re TiVo, theres no problem with using gnu/linux as 'firmware', but it does stop such companies from locking down the code freely given to them under condition that they give it freely as well, in their devices and inserting spyware and other malicious code without ppl being able to remove them, as TiVo did. It disallows making free software pseudo-free by using technical loopholes to the language of previous GPL, and could aid us in avoiding being dominated by DRM..
it seems a robust, internationalised, more compatible and strong copyleft licence, that GPL allways meant to be.
talking about freedom
A human being is a part of the whole, called by us Universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness.This delusion is a kind of prison, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole nature in its beauty. Albert Einstein
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