FSF Launches Fundraiser For Replicant 63
gnujoshua writes "The FSF has launched a fundraiser for Replicant, the fully free Android distro. As of version 4.0 0004, Replicant runs on 10 different devices, but, the hopes are that with additional funds, the developers will be able to purchase more devices and grow the project so it will run on more devices. Yesterday, the FSF asked Mark Shuttleworth if the Ubuntu EDGE would commit to using only free software and be able to support Replicant. But, in an AMA on Reddit, Shuttleworth confirmed that Replicant would not be supported because the EDGE hardware will require proprietary drivers/binary-blobs."
Replicant now supports ten devices, compared to only the HTC Dream not all that long ago.
I've... seen things you people wouldn't believe (Score:4, Funny)
Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched c-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those... moments... will be lost in time, like tears... in... rain. Time... to die...*
Re: (Score:1)
Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched c-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those... moments... will be lost in time, like tears... in... rain. Time... to die...*
Have you ever dreamed of unicorns, by any chance?
do you dream of Electric Sheep?
I'm still waiting for my "standard pleasure" unit.
And .... my favorite quote that is SO apropos in this day and age in the US: "If you're not cop, you're little people!"
Oh! On last thing, the mod who mod'ed the parent '-1' - I suggest you go back to the Justin Beiber website you came from because you obviously don't have a geek card and NEVER had one.
Blade Runner is non-free (Score:1)
do you dream of Electric Sheep?
No, but Pokemon trainers dream of electric mice [bulbagarden.net].
If you're not cop, you're little people!
And even if you are a cop, you can still be little people [amazon.com].
If seeing the non-free film Blade Runner is a requirement of keeping a geek card valid, what method do you recommend to see this film without breaking the law, both inside and outside the United States? Redbox carries only new releases.
What other movies? (Score:2)
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If seeing the non-free film Blade Runner is a requirement of keeping a geek card valid, what method do you recommend to see this film without breaking the law, both inside and outside the United States? Redbox carries only new releases.
Look, I know you're obsessed with "Free", but don't let that carry into media. If you want to see Blade Runner, you can:
1. Buy it on Blu-Ray or DVD
2. Buy it Digitally from: iTunes, Vudu, Amazon Instant Video, Sony Entertainment Network (aka PSN), Xbox Marketplace
3. Rent it from the above (and more) services, it's also available for rental on Google Play as well.
4. Watch it on your Cable or Satellite companies VOD services, it's there too.
5. Check to see if a local video store has it.
6. Wait for it to show
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5. Check to see if a local video store has it.
2003 called and wants you back. There's no such thing as a "local video store" any more (except maybe for the adult shops).
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1991 called it wants it's meme back.
I must be imagining that Family Video store (which is the largest chain now, ahead of Blockbuster) in my town. I must be imagining that the closest "big town" to my small town has four of them.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_Video [wikipedia.org]
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Never seen anything like that. I guess you midwesterners haven't learned about Netflix yet. Why on earth would anyone go to a store and rent a DVD or two for the cost of a monthly Netflix membership?
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Because they get new releases before Netflix and have things Netflix doesn't? And rent games, sell pizza, offer recommendations.
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What moronic moderator modded this "off topic"?? Hand in your geek card and don't let the door hit you on the way out. Shame on you.
And yes, that was my first thought too: "they're going to have a kickstarter for Replicants??" :)
Re: (Score:3)
What moronic moderator modded this "off topic"??
How can it not know what it is?
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What moronic moderator modded this "off topic"??
One that failed the Voigt-Kampff test, evidently.
Most misleading title ever (Score:1)
Google's against everything the FSF stands for... (Score:3)
...so, honestly curious, why is the FSF engaged in an exercise which promotes the Google ecosystem?
They've always struck me as being far-sighted, not narrow-sighted.
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...so, honestly curious, why is the FSF engaged in an exercise which promotes the Google ecosystem?
They've always struck me as being far-sighted, not narrow-sighted.
Who said they are promoting the Google ecosystem?
According to their FAQ (http://replicant.us/faq/):
"Replicant includes only free software. We don’t include any google app, we have libre alternatives for each of them."
Re:Google's against everything the FSF stands for. (Score:5, Insightful)
he's saying that by being able to run android apps you're promoting googles ecosystem.
and yes you are, but so what? it's not that far from saying that since apache can serve IE it's promoting IE.. or that wine is promoting microsoft.
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Sounds like it corrects one of my main problems with Android...I'm going to set up an Android tablet as the nav system in my 4x4 soon, I think I'll give it a try.
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Android, as a platform, is independent from Google's ecosystem. Replicant has little to no control over their future due to Google being a largely insular upstream that dictates where it goes, but nonetheless the platform is not fundamentally tied into Google's services.
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Replicant has little to no control over their future due to Google being a largely insular upstream that dictates where it goes
Hm, I would say that replicant has total control over their future, due to the fact that it is a free software project. If its upstream (Cyanogenmod) turns to a direction Replicant doesn't like (either by CM's decision or AOSP), they can simply not pull those changes into Replicant.
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I too am honestly curious.
What is the value in slagging what appears to be a completely Free/Libre OS?
And what other "ecosystem" did you have in mind, other than that of Apple/iOS or Microsoft/WinWhatever? Is either of those somehow more worthy?
Like the man said, you gotta serve somebody.
Enlighten me. Because as far as I can tell, you're the one being narrow-minded.
BTW, I notice my S3 is on the list of supported devices. Might be a good time and way to nuke all the Samsung crapware from it.
Re:Google's against everything the FSF stands for. (Score:5, Informative)
You could have nuked the Samsung stuff last year by putting Cyanogenmod on it.
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No I couldn't, since I didn't have this phone last year.
And I deliberately avoided mentioning Cyanogenmod. :)
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I too am honestly curious.
What is the value in slagging what appears to be a completely Free/Libre OS?
And what other "ecosystem" did you have in mind, other than that of Apple/iOS or Microsoft/WinWhatever?
Meego, and it's fully open source successors? They're also true GNU/Linux, so I'm surprised why the FSF would NOT choose them first.
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Looks to me like Meego's DOA, and it appears that Mer and Tizen are not yet viable.
BTW, I've not received any direct answer to my first question.
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Meego was killed by Nokia in favour of WP.
Jolla seems to be pre-selling meego-derived phones without any issues.
Also, if you're wondering about the benefits of free software, there's plenty of sources out there, nobody's going to explain that to you on slashdot.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I believe it would be better to build a privacy-oriented free alternative to all the spy-on-me crapware. This year there are several new mobile OS'es up for release, but they all seem all to be designed for HTML5 or the "cloud", which in my book, are even more evil than Android or iOS. There was a time when I had hope for Nokia, but then Stephen Elop happened.
I want a phone that can run applications, on the device. I want to decide which applications. I want to be able to block any company or se
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...so, honestly curious, why is the FSF engaged in an exercise which promotes the Google ecosystem?
They're being pragmatic, promoting the only working Free Operating System for smartphones out there. The fact that Replicant is a fork of Cyanogenmod, which is a fork of AOSP, it's of no consequence.
question for submitter (Score:2, Interesting)
Joshua Davis, why doesn't the FSF start this fundraiser on a well-known crowd funding site?
Re: question for submitter (Score:1)
But the donors are aggregated there at the fund rising sites and have their money setup there, FSF is not known to general populace. Ubuntu Edge, that has now raised over 6million in 3 days is using IndieGoGo, lets see how FSF alone fares.
That's cool. Thanks FSF! (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't give a damn about Android, really. It's relevant, but my biggest hobby is a different way to design OSs and programming models. Having devices with all the driver code available means I don't have to use a C compiler at all, I can port the code into the OS proper and gain more security and efficiency -- I use very different sub-routine calling constructs to prevent stack smashing and isolate all data from code pointers, so it's inefficient to switch into CDECL or other insecure C-ish compatible calls.
TL;DR: Replicant is awesome not just for Android / Linux, but for everyone.
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Posting AC to avoid invalidating my mods
One thing I was wondering - if the FSF is interested in Replicant, why not do it by taking something like GNU Mach, or forking Minix 3, and then building on top of it? That way, they can not only make it GPL3, they can even make it AGPL3, and build their 'libre' services on top of it. I'd suggest that since the battle for both desktops & servers are over (and won by Windows/Linux/BSD), they should focus their liberated OS efforts just on Replicant. Re-orient H
Copyleft is a virus because it's a vaccine (Score:5, Insightful)
Fecal transplant (Score:2)
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Not really, poor analogy. A vaccine cures the patient.
The [L]GPL keeps the software FLOSS, but actually removes freedoms from the user/developer.
Something like the ISC/MIT grant the user more freedom, including the freedom to make the software non-free.
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The [L]GPL keeps the software FLOSS, but actually removes freedoms from the user/developer.
Copyleft makes sure that users retain freedoms, including the freedom to hire developers to make the software do what the user wants.
Something like the ISC/MIT grant the user more freedom, including the freedom to make the software non-free.
Perhaps the difference is that in the FSF philosophy, the "freedom" to take freedoms away from users isn't a freedom to begin with.
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The [L]GPL keeps the software FLOSS, but actually removes freedoms from the user/developer.
Copyleft makes sure that users retain freedoms, including the freedom to hire developers to make the software do what the user wants.
No, copyleft puts software first, and the user second. If that's a good or bad thing is rather subjective though. Personally, I dislike that, but I understand that others think that keep software free is more important the individuals.
Something like the ISC/MIT grant the user more freedom, including the freedom to make the software non-free.
Perhaps the difference is that in the FSF philosophy, the "freedom" to take freedoms away from users isn't a freedom to begin with.
The FSF critizicies copyright, but uses it as a key tool maintain it's goals. Without strong copyright laws, something like GPL is totally impossible.
Software freedom, user freedom, developer freedom (Score:2)
Copyleft makes sure that users retain freedoms, including the freedom to hire developers to make the software do what the user wants.
No, copyleft puts software first, and the user second.
How is that the case? A free software license guarantees four freedoms [gnu.org] to the users of a work. Because the work is free, all of its users are free, even if this is freedom is at the expense of some developers' business models.
Without strong copyright laws, something like GPL is totally impossible.
Without software copyright, anybody can obtain a copy of a proprietary program and lawfully disassemble, document, and distribute it.
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Without strong copyright laws, something like GPL is totally impossible.
Without software copyright, anybody can obtain a copy of a proprietary program and lawfully disassemble, document, and distribute it.
Exactly. With the GPL, the same does not apply. There are a lot of usage restrictions.
Usage restrictions (Score:2)
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The [L]GPL keeps the software FLOSS, but actually removes freedoms from the user/developer.
Copyleft makes sure that users retain freedoms, including the freedom to hire developers to make the software do what the user wants.
No, copyleft puts software first, and the user second. If that's a good or bad thing is rather subjective though. Personally, I dislike that, but I understand that others think that keep software free is more important the individuals.
No, copyleft puts users first, developers second. Software freedom is about the "four freedoms", and they are, as you can see, things the user is free to do.
Something like the ISC/MIT grant the user more freedom, including the freedom to make the software non-free.
Perhaps the difference is that in the FSF philosophy, the "freedom" to take freedoms away from users isn't a freedom to begin with.
The FSF critizicies copyright, but uses it as a key tool maintain it's goals. Without strong copyright laws, something like GPL is totally impossible.
1) The FSF criticizes copyright, but that has nothing to do with the fact that "freedom" to take freedoms away isn't a freedom to begin with;
2) FSF criticizing copyright (as it is) doesn't mean that they oppose to any kind of copyright. It is not true that you need "strong copyright laws", but you need some copyright laws (instead of everything being o
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No, copyleft puts users first, developers second. Software freedom is about the "four freedoms", and they are, as you can see, things the user is free to do.
Being a user and being a developer is in no way mutually exclusive. Developers are, generally, the first users of any software.
In any case, why would a non-developer user care about those "freedoms"? It's the devs that are affected.
Secondly, why would a developer ever pick a license that puts HIM second.
1) The FSF criticizes copyright, but that has nothing to do with the fact that "freedom" to take freedoms away isn't a freedom to begin with;
2) FSF criticizing copyright (as it is) doesn't mean that they oppose to any kind of copyright. It is not true that you need "strong copyright laws", but you need some copyright laws (instead of everything being on public domain). More about that here: http://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/pirate-party-and-free-software [fsf.org]
However, MIT/ISC are way close to public domain that the GPL.
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No, copyleft puts users first, developers second. Software freedom is about the "four freedoms", and they are, as you can see, things the user is free to do.
Being a user and being a developer is in no way mutually exclusive. Developers are, generally, the first users of any software. In any case, why would a non-developer user care about those "freedoms"? It's the devs that are affected.
Secondly, why would a developer ever pick a license that puts HIM second.
A non-developer user would care about those freedoms because that's the only way they can guarantee they control the program and what it does for them. More info here: http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html [gnu.org] A developer would pick a license that puts users first when the developer thinks that the users of the program should have control of the said program, and what it does.
1) The FSF criticizes copyright, but that has nothing to do with the fact that "freedom" to take freedoms away isn't a freedom to begin with;
2) FSF criticizing copyright (as it is) doesn't mean that they oppose to any kind of copyright. It is not true that you need "strong copyright laws", but you need some copyright laws (instead of everything being on public domain). More about that here: http://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/pirate-party-and-free-software [fsf.org]
However, MIT/ISC are way close to public domain that the GPL.
Yes, those licenses are closer to the public domain. They both have problems, tho: http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html [gnu.org]
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So we both agree that the GPL puts the software and developer second, and the user first.
Again, I'm not arguing if that's a good thing or a bad thing, my point was just that.
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The Free Software Foundation promotes the viral GPL license. They should not be supported.
Ideas are viral. We should not support ideas.
Yeah, but ... (Score:2)
"Working with non-free firmware" (Score:2)
Many of the status items on the ReplicantStatus page. So, it's hard to be too critical of Shuttleworth at this juncture.