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Celebrate Software Freedom Today 107

An anonymous reader writes "It's that time of the year again: when we all unite regardless of the (free) licenses we cherish and go out into the streets to let people know how Free Software has changed our lives. With over 425 events in 80+ countries, communities as diverse as Joomla!, FreeBSD and The OpenDisc, to name just a few, will be celebrating all over the world. Don't wait; grab your best arguments and join the wild masses of freedom lovers to the software freedom parties. Where will you be partying today?"
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Celebrate Software Freedom Today

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  • by ge7 ( 2194648 ) on Saturday September 17, 2011 @07:20AM (#37428108)
    Why not have it on weekdays when most people don't have dates, wild parties or bar nights to check out the girls? What were they thinking?
    • Because it's a celebration...?

    • Well, today I'll be celebrating Linux's 20th birthday. I guess all you people who celebrated earlier dates for Linux's birthday must celebrate your own birthday as the day yo mama told everyone she wasn't fat, she was pregnant.

    • THE Irc Channel is #fsd . Get on there now .. Be apart of the Free Software Movement ... Slahdot effect REQUired. .... Deploying Spikes ..... ..... END OF
    • by hackus ( 159037 )

      Girls?

      Is that a git branch of the kernel? What is that?

      -Hack

      • GIRL: It's sort of like URL, except the resource is "generally infrequent" and possibly difficult to locate.

        If you think about it, isn't a Freedom Day event a safer place to bring a date than a wild party? In which setting is a date more likely to run off with someone else?

        Whether it be a girl, the Dell Dude, or just Hands Solo, bring your date along.

      • GIRL is GNU in Real Life. Originally started by hippies by pooling their girlfriends, creating more competition and better services.

    • Well, on weekdays most people have work or school.
    • by kmoser ( 1469707 )
      People are planning to have their Windows 8 launch parties on that day.
  • Party? (Score:3, Funny)

    by david.a.judge ( 1973214 ) on Saturday September 17, 2011 @07:54AM (#37428230)
    >Where will you be partying today?

    My basement. Alone. Where else?
    • by Anonymous Coward

      My basement

      Technically, it's your parents' basement.

  • Free as in...? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Wowsers ( 1151731 ) on Saturday September 17, 2011 @08:31AM (#37428348) Journal

    I do not mind if there was a charge for Linux, although being free is nice.

    I decided to try Linux because as each iteration of Windows came about, more and more things get locked down so the user cant do things. For testing I still have a Windows install (used rarely), but by going from WinXP to Win7, even silly things like recording "What you hear" from the sound system have been locked down. It's this constant locking down of features that drove me to Linux.

    Leaving aside major changes like KDE3 to KDE4, at least I am free to change the desktop the way I like, and not some way Microsoft wants you to "experience" in Windows.

    One thing I will say, sometimes you can't get people to Linux no matter how many Live Distros you run showing their really old computer can be used again at a faster speed with up to date Linux compared to an ancient copy of Windows (and is too old to run up to minute Windows).

    • by Anonymous Coward

      I put Ubuntu on my mediaserver and started learning bits & pieces about Linux, after I got pissed off at Win7 bogging it down. So #fsd for me is about Linux and everything that I (didn't ;) ) torrent.

    • by Anonymous Coward

      BTW, the perceived "lock down" in Windows 7 of the audio system is in fact the ineptitude or unwillingness on the part of Microsoft to provide a media crossbar application for CoreAudio in Windows. The problem existed since Vista. The developer kit once contained a small application that solved the problem, but was removed, unfortunately. This is also one of the reasons for me why I've become a permanent Linux user for some years now.

      • Re:Free as in...? (Score:4, Informative)

        by Dr_Barnowl ( 709838 ) on Saturday September 17, 2011 @11:55AM (#37429492)

        It's totally on purpose. Microsoft have really bent over for the media cartels - the whole "Protected Media Path" gubbins is about this. You can't get an unsigned driver to load (outside of debug mode), which means you can't, for example, write a video driver that just dumps frames to disk.

  • Maybe it's just me, and I'm sorry, but I imagine that the local "Software Freedom" party would be only very slightly less painful and awkward than the "CoCo Forever" party thrown last week by the local Tandy Computer User's Group.
  • Hilarious (Score:1, Funny)

    by TheRaven64 ( 641858 )
    People planning Software Freedom Day parties with Google Maps. Maybe they'll send invitations by sharing MS Word documents on Facebook too...
    • by Anonymous Coward

      It's Open Street Map.

    • Speaking of MS Word, I looked at the list of celebrations for one in Microsoft's back yard. None are listed in Washington state. Time to get busy for next year. This year I'll looking to cross the river to Portland, but the link doesn't list a location for the event. Portland is a big place. I'll have to Google Wordpress to see if there is more info.

  • Top Four by Country (Score:3, Interesting)

    by detroitindustrial ( 587050 ) on Saturday September 17, 2011 @09:51AM (#37428770) Homepage
    http://wiki.softwarefreedomday.org/CategoryTeam2011 [softwarefreedomday.org]

    Top Four by country:
    India 53
    USA 37
    Philippines 28
    Mexico 27

    Looks like Open Source is quite active in the Philippines and Mexico.
  • I need to feed my family. I write code for a living. How do I get paid for doing this in a world where all software is free?
    • The small percentage of people who have found true success will tell you to use donations. For everyone for whom that didn't work, I have no idea. Perhaps paid support or extras?
      • The small percentage of people who have found true success will tell you to use donations. For everyone for whom that didn't work, I have no idea. Perhaps paid support or extras?

        How about if I withhold my software until you pay me? The free market will set the price. Is that OK?

        • How about if I withhold my software until you pay me? The free market will set the price. Is that OK?

          Of course. Why are you setting up ridiculous straw-man arguments?

          First you ask about how you can make a living in a hypothetical world in which all software is "free," presumably meaning that it's free-as-in-beer (doesn't cost money). But that world doesn't exist, and never will, for fundamental reasons. E.g., nobody is going to write an application for free for a corporation's internal use, to do something that only that corporation needs to do. Furthermore, nobody is calling for a world in which all softw

          • Actually, as Eric Raymond pointed out in 'The Cathedral & the Bazaar', the usage of the term 'Free' was an unfortunate choice of words, given that it more intuitively implies free of cost, rather than free to re-engineer. What made it worse was that most 'Free' software was actually free (as in beer), making the differences b/w the two even more nebulous.

            On RMS, he was once asked about the competitors to GNU, and when he listed some and was asked about Microsoft, his response was that they don't have

            • Oh come on. RMS has said that since ages. Look, how do we make a road? The state pays civil engineers to design and manufacture it, and then it is free for all. Of course it needs maintenance, and again the state pays people to the job.
              Thus, if we need structural analysis software, developers get paid to do it and maintain it by tax money, and everyone has it for free.
              Things change. Noone has a god-given right to earn money, if they do something that people don't care. To see how ridiculous is the asserti
        • Who exactly said it wasn't? I don't see anyone saying you shouldn't be able to sell software. Not even RMS advocates that. You're just knocking down a strawman, to make some lame point about the free market.

          You go ahead and withhold your software, Galt, the world won't miss you.
    • by brit74 ( 831798 )
      Don't worry about getting paid. Do it for the benefit of society, citizen! Just like teachers, doctors, and bus drivers.

      Wait, what? Those people get paid for their work? fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu.

      Seriously, though: you write a product wanted by a corporation - like Google giving hundreds of millions of dollars to pay for Mozilla Development, or companies spending millions on Linux development. Donation-based money from consumers is basically a way to poverty. So, I guess that pretty much lim
      • If he was lucky enough to make it big in free software like Stallman, I doubt he'd be living under a bridge, or plugging the 'Food movement' [stallman.org]. But does Stallman even program nowadays - I thought all he does was head the FSF, which doesn't do any development, just advocacy, which is something anybody can do. So yeah, the OP might want to pursue that line of work, feed his family while not writing even a line of code, which ain't going to do squat for his income anyway!
    • by Anonymous Coward

      I write code for a living, too. I write middleware for a large banking conglomerate and they really have two choices:

      1) they pay me to write all the code needed from scratch

      2) they pay me to extend GPLed code where possible and write just a little code myself (also GPL, as is required by the license).

      They consistently chose 2) so far, although if they chose 1), I'd be happy too, safe busy employment for the next 5 years or so...

      Someone has to write the software in the first place and for that, they get paid

    • by jgrahn ( 181062 )

      I need to feed my family. I write code for a living. How do I get paid for doing this in a world where all software is free?

      You don't, but that world does not exist and never will. All the software I *directly* use in my daily life is already free; all the software I produce as a hobby is free. Yet I have no trouble finding things to do at work.

    • by bcrowell ( 177657 ) on Saturday September 17, 2011 @11:51AM (#37429468) Homepage

      I need to feed my family. I write code for a living. How do I get paid for doing this in a world where all software is free?

      I would think the answer was pretty obvious. Write software for which there is no free equivalent, or write software that is better than the free equivalent.

    • by Anonymous Coward

      You are selling a *service* and *domain expertise*, not "software". Consulting as a signal processing / applied math guy, I use 90% free source hosted on girthub. Its too complicated and lacks documentation for anyone but a handful of friends in other places to understand, source is worthless to the client. They need
      it to add the 10% that makes it work on their hardware in the field and do so reliably.

    • by mspohr ( 589790 ) on Saturday September 17, 2011 @12:47PM (#37429746)
      IBM, HP and many other companies make billions of dollars supporting free software. It's called customization and maintenance. You should check it out.
    • by Murdoc ( 210079 )
      It's called Technocracy [technocracy.ca], where not only would you not have to worry about being paid, but everything would be open source anyway. What programmer wouldn't love that, the ability to code to your heart's content, on whatever project you want, whenever you want?
  • Ahem... (Score:4, Funny)

    by LaminatorX ( 410794 ) <sabotage@praecUU ... inus threevowels> on Saturday September 17, 2011 @12:56PM (#37429798) Homepage

    Richard Stallman had a printer,
    whose code he could not see.
    So he began to tinker,
    And set the software free.

  • by Microlith ( 54737 ) on Saturday September 17, 2011 @01:14PM (#37429886)

    Half are trolls, most are useless, and few are above +3. Slashdot's demographics seem to have rotted out completely.

  • Celebrate the ironic memory of /. not having a gruesome banner add at page top.
  • Yay! Softwar Freedom Day. Go FOSS! not sure how I'm going to celebrate though

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