ZefHemel.com

Dear free software supporter,

Now is the time to join and give to Free Software Foundation. 2008 is going to be extraordinarily important year for free software.

Eben Moglen likes to quote Gandhi’s “first they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win” progression when describing the free software movement. As I pointed out when I joined the FSF board, we’re beginning to see powerful interests fighting free software. It’s going to increase in the next few years. Things will probably get a lot uglier for free software before they get better. We can win but things are far from settled. The FSF is the front-line organization in this fight and we need a robust and proactive foundation, and an active and involved membership, if we’re going to win.

Here are some of the issues that the FSF will pursue in the next year.

That’s right people. The Free Software Fundamentalists want your money. This may seem ironic, but as any Free Software nerd would immediately yell in his high-pitched voice: “Free as in freedom, not money!” So let the money poor in. And what better way to get money than to quote Ghandi. Because quoting implies like-mindedness and who does not agree that Ghandi was a stand-up guy? So here’s the FSF logic:

Ghandi -> Good and FSF -> like Ghandi => FSF -> Good

A typical nerdy logic proof that, of course, makes no sense whatsoever.

So, the issues the FSF decided to care about (and spend your money on) in 2008:

1. “Expanding activism outside our traditional technologist communities,” i.e. spread the plague!
2. “Get proactive about software patents,” i.e. making money from doing innovative work — bad, getting money for no particular reason (like to run some communist organization) — good!
3. “Web services and the changing face of software,” i.e. gimme the source of that PHP page!

’nuff said.

– IT Conservative

Hi all, it’s me, your old buddy IT Conservative! I’m back! There is just too much ridiculous stuff happening in the make-believe world of Free Software to keep my mouth shut. So Zef gave me the opportunity to write about it here once in a while.

It is final. King Richard is losing his mind. On his website he posted the following picture:

No, nothing is wrong with your eyes, this is King Richard on a BMX bike trying to convert people to the Free side (formerly known as the dark side) in Peru. Steve tells us his “friends” are getting worried:

Friends of free software guru Richard M. Stallman are starting to get worried about his increasingly erratic behavior. He’s been taking off on trips and not telling anyone where he is; he’ll be gone for weeks at a time. Then there was his Craigslist ad seeking a girlfriend, and then the hip-hop dancing on the lawn at MIT.

I agree, there is definitely a pattern here. Let the alienation begin.