I hope the author appreciates the irony of hosting this blog with svbtle…
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?
btw, I meant to say "exotic"
I use and need a replacement for gmail, for todoist, for linkedin and probably a few others.
So what would an hacker, returning to freedom, suggest as replacement?
Isn't it better than just doing nothing? What are you planning to do to do any good? What do you think the average non-tech guy should do?
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.
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.
How you ask?
Build your own free apps. Publish. ??? Profit!
And speaking about practical solutions, I know of identi.ca and libre.fm , do you know of others?
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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!
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.
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).
May be the single most depressing thing someone has ever used as a defense of their own freedom. Lay off the propaganda.
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.
I love Aurora; I'd been using it for the last few months as my primary browser on my Mac.