Opinions

opinions

Guerrilla marketing part two

Following on from my general introduction to guerilla marketing in the first issue of this magazine, I will now discuss some specifics of getting good press coverage. This much-neglected area of marke ...

by Tom Chance – 4/19/2005

opinions

When free meets proprietary

In a dream world, all software would be free. However, we spend enough time with our eyes open to realize that some situations call for proprietary software, either as a desktop or as a server applica ...

by Daniel Escasa – 4/9/2005

opinions

Richard Stallman’s blog

# Venezuela (November 15, 2004 to November 22, 2004) I spent a week in Venezuela, giving a speech and some interviews at an event which invited speakers from all across Latin America. During the event ...

by Richard Stallman – 4/9/2005

opinions

The risk of mixing free and non-free

If you are reading this you probably use free software. In fact, I think the probability that you are reading this article using free software is extremely high, whether it is “free-as-in-speech” as i ...

by Edward Macnaghten – 4/7/2005

opinions

The Libre Culture Manifesto

We have written this manifesto always wishing to unfold the concept and practice of free/libre and open-source. We wanted it to stretch out so that it might take us in new directions. To start off wit ...

by David Berry – 4/6/2005

opinions

Promoting free software on non-free platforms

In a recent discussion on the Slashdot web site, free software users and advocates raised the question of whether the KDE project should be ported to the Microsoft Windows platform. Advocates for port ...

by Chris Karr – 4/5/2005

opinions

A law for free software

Free software, also known as open source, libre software, FOSS, FLOSS and even LOSS, relies on traditional software legal protection, with a twist. Semantics aside (I will describe all the above as “f ...

by Maureen OSullivan – 4/3/2005

opinions

Thank you!

Thank you! This “thank you” is dedicated to all of the subscribers who are now reading issue 3 of Free Software Magazine. You have decided that it was worthwhile paying money for Free Software Magazin ...

by Tony Mobily – 4/1/2005

opinions

Guerrilla marketing

It is a common assumption that companies who distribute free software will promote it, leaving the community to concentrate on the meat of the project itself (including code, documentation, graphics, ...

by Tom Chance – 3/31/2005

opinions

The FUD-based Encyclopedia

In this article, I respond to Robert McHenry’s anti-Wikipedia piece entitled “The Faith-Based Encyclopedia.” I argue that McHenry’s points are contradictory and incoherent and that his rhetoric is sel ...

by Aaron Krowne – 3/28/2005

opinions

Why free IT management tools are gaining traction

The $3.6 billion worldwide market for IT management software is ripe for competition from free software. Leading products from HP, CA, BMC and IBM are overkill for the vast majority of the market. Lic ...

by Will Winkelstein – 3/16/2005

opinions

Your part-time job

Being a “computer person” these days is a very stressful business. Forget about angry customers, missed deadlines, unreasonable bosses and co-workers, shrinking wages, etc. Those are just things you g ...

by Tony Mobily – 3/1/2005

opinions

Richard Stallman’s blog

# Bolivia (La Paz) (August 12, 2004 to August 17, 2004) I am now visiting La Paz, Bolivia. The city is on the edge of the altiplano, starting on the plain at 13000 feet and running down through a conn ...

by Richard Stallman – 2/28/2005

opinions

Let’s not forget our roots

GNU/Linux is growing all the time: new software is being created; new copies downloaded or bought; new users are discovering free software for the first time. With this growth we have seen the rise of ...

by Tom Chance – 2/25/2005

opinions

The Commons

The concept of the commons has a long heritage. The Romans distinguished between different categories of property, these were: Firstly, res privatæ, which consisted of things capable of being possesse ...

by David Berry – 2/21/2005

opinions

It’s all about freedom

Maybe it’s true that a “Rose by any other name still smells as sweet,” but not being able to easily pronounce the name of software is a big turn off to exploring it. That’s true whether the name of yo ...

by Christian Einfeldt – 2/19/2005

opinions

Motivation and value of free resources

In October of 2000, web-savvy math students lost a critical education tool. MathWorld, an online encyclopedia of mathematics, vanished from the web leaving students, educators, and mathematicians with ...

by Aaron Klemm – 2/16/2005

opinions

The content tail wags the IT dog

The content industries have conspicuously failed to create a business model based on paid content over public IP networks, but still cling to the idea that those networks were created for just that us ...

by Daniel James – 2/13/2005

opinions

Free file formats and the future of intellectual freedom

So far, proprietary formats have been maintained through a number of short-term tricks, but the advantages of free formats become clearer in the long run. Business and the computer industry have tende ...

by Terry Hancock – 1/26/2005

opinions

Format Wars

Real programmers love their applications’ source code: the faster and more elegant it is, the better. Users are after very different things: they seem to want simplicity, flashy colors, nice icons and ...

by Marco Fioretti – 1/20/2005