Entries classified under foss

For a really long time now I've wanted to get my development related projects, essays, and other ramblings into a more coherent place on the web. At the same time, I've been thinking a lot about this "movement" (for lack of a better word) that I've grown a small part of that is simplifying, humanizing, and opening up IT.

There's a significant portion of the development community that's just plain pissed off at the status quo and have begun pursuing radically different ways of building and delivering systems from what is now commonly accepted by the established industry. To our delight, we're finding that There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom and that the next big thing in IT should really be making it smaller.

We're also finding that this new-think will not be accepted by the mainstream analyst firms, tech publications, and vendor powerhouses on simple merit. Pimping the latest acronym from the latest vendor with the latest money is a much easier way of bringing in stupid amounts of cash than is trying to move an industry forward in providing real value to actual people. So screw you guys - your goals are in direct competition with those of my customers.

As you can see, I'm a little bitter... But I'm also excited - we're assembling a stack of tools and techniques that are demonstrably superior and yet somehow much simpler than those of the mainstream past. We're starting companies and controlling our future and it just feels right.

So I'm proud to announce that lesscode.org is open for business. It's still a work in progress but here are my goals for the place:

• Advocate, communicate, and discuss the happenings of the less movement.

• Provide tools and resources for like minded individuals to collaborate on projects (subversion, mailman, trac, etc).

I'm also prepared to chase funding in the form of hosting, bandwidth, admin time, etc. should their be significant interest in the concept.

This site will stick around but most of my development related posts will move to lesscode.org.

Warren points to one of the most concise and powerful recitations of GNU/Free Software philosophy I've ever seen. This message to the fedora-devel mailing list is in response to one of the many "we must work with the proprietary driver vendors" pundits:

Choosing slavery is not a freedom, it's waiving freedom.

Likewise, accepting non-Free(dom) terms is not freedom of choice, but subjugation to somebody else's power over you.

In the case of 3d binary drivers, they're exploiting your craving for 3D, and providing it at [the] cost of your loss of freedom.

It is your choice, in fact, but not much different than the choice a chemically (3D) addicted person has over buying the chemical [from] the local dealer. You may get the appeasing visions, but in the end you'll eventually suffer, and you seem to like enticing others to do it, which is reprehensible.

Rui

That's the closest thing I've seen to a solid line in determining whether you subscribe to Free Software philosophy - you either agree or you don't.

Me? I hope to be completely clean someday... (as I write this on my proprietary Macintosh listening to DRM protected songs on iTunes - crack!)

Dan Gillmor points to an excellent example of distributed journalism in action over at Daily Kos. I was completely blown away by what I saw when I got there. I'm still trying to soak in all the background around the Plame Leak / Jeff Gannon thing but, to be honest, the specifics of this event are not as important to me as the general phenomenon occurring there. This seems an obvious glimpse into a future where involvement by the general population in issues of import to the general population is increased substantially. Herewith some rant and analysis of our present toolset and humble suggestion for improvement...