Dan Siemon » Free Software

Free software/copyright conference at UWO

Dan Siemon — Thu, 22 Mar 2007 21:23:56 +0000

On Monday April 9th and Tuesday April 10th Western Law is hosting a conference at the University of Western Ontario in London, Ontario, Canada called Knowledge Policy for the 21st Century.

Speakers include:

Richard Stallman founder of the Free Software Foundation.
Stacie LeGrow from RedHat.
Matt Norwood from the Software Freedom Law Center.
Jason Schultz from the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
Macrus Bornfreund from Creative Commons Canada.
Law faculty from The University of Western Ontario, Queensland University of Technology – Brisbane Australia, Victoria University – New Zealand, Ohio State University.

The conference fee is pretty cheap so if you are in the area it may be a great event to attend.

GPL and LGPL license quiz

Dan Siemon — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 14:15:55 +0000

Do you understand the GPL and LGPL?

Take the quiz!

GPL FAQ

Elephants Dream

Dan Siemon — Tue, 13 Jun 2006 02:14:57 +0000

Wow.

Elephants Dream is a short movie that was created using only free software. Even the models and textures produced for the movie have been made available. It is being called the first open-source movie.

I had no idea that animation of this quality was possible with open-source tools.

There is even a full HD (1920×1080) MPEG4 version available if you happen to have the processing power required to decode it in real time.

RedHat summit videos

Dan Siemon — Fri, 09 Jun 2006 17:00:08 +0000

Red Hat has posted videos of the keynotes from the Red Hat summit in Nashville. So far, I have only watched two of the three videos. Both were excellent.

Eben Moglen: Discusses the philosophical and political ideas behind free software. He argues that free software is about allowing individual creativity. If you don’t ‘get’ free software you need to watch this speech.

Cory Doctorow: Provides a bit of history on copyright change and how the incumbent industries always try to stop progress. Lots of good DRM discussion as well.

There is no future in which bits will be harder to copy than they are today … Any business model that based on the idea that bits will be harder to copy is doomed. [Cory Doctorow (2006 RedHat summit in Nashville)]

I found both of these speeches to be inspiring. Free software is the start of a wider revolution. As Moglen says in his keynote (paraphrasing), it is an incredible privilege to live through a revolution.