Oft wird heutzutage über Freiheit geredet: Gedankenfreiheit, Rede-, Presse- und Meinungsfreiheit und wie viel oder wenig von alledem uns noch erhalten geblieben ist.
Doch zwei Lager im eigentlich doch recht großmütigen Bereich der OpenSource- oder Free-Software prügeln sich um die Definition dieses Freiheitsbegriffs mehr als alle anderen: Die Anhänger der GPL und der BSD-Lizenzen...

Weiterlesen...

Alright, we know that people who make decisions are not necessarily the ones who have a clue about the thing they have to decide on. This is widely known and accepted but sometimes leads to horrible misinformed decisions.
Today, the German Bundestag agreed to outlaw security software that might be used for malicious purposes.
Well, dear law-makers of this country, every last piece of security software can be used for malicious purposes. Just like a car. You can use a car to get to work but you can also use it while robbing a bank. You can use a fork to pick up the potato from the plate or stab that obnoxious neighbor of yours.
See the CCC press release for a first assessment and comments on the decision.
Right, off to doing more ill... err, I didn't say anything, did I?
- Dennis

Yes, it's hot. It's so damn hot that I can hardly think clearly. I've hardly ever seen anything that hot!
Oh, you're talking about the weather? I'm sorry, I was talking about Jokosher, the new Linux multitrack software.
We (and by we I mean the great devs and packaging people in the Jokosher team) have just released 0.1 to the world – a first glance at what is to come in the future. The 'we' in the previous sentence by the way referred to me writing some documentation and doing some translation stuff... but that isn't important.
Get over to jokosher.org right now, get the package, play with it, report problems and greatness in the forums and have fun with it.
Unfortunately I'll not be at LUGRadio Live 2006 to join all the chaps celebrating the release with lots of fruit juice and milk but I'd like to thank all you guys for making this happen. It's a great team we're having there and I think we will write some history.
Oh, and it's hot by the way. Outside, I mean.
- Dennis

There's a really nice thing over there at http://www.firefoxflicks.com where people can send in their little promo videos for the Firefox browser. Here's one:

Sometimes, it's not too good to get out of bed in the morning. Sometimes it's even worse to get out just to read something like this.
In short: There's a company that holds patents to a technology which directly affects your web browsing experience and now tries to enforce the rights they claim.
Now Microsoft are changing their browser to avoid paying probably quite large sums in licensing fees by working around a specific wording in the patent. So basically, before playing a Flash game in your browser, you'll first have to click it, before playing video in your browser - you guessed it, you'll first have to click it.
Now, I'm asking you: Who's the bonehead in this equation? Eolas for patenting something that shouts "Prior Art" so loud that even the guys at a British petroleum company will hear it, spinning in their graves? Microsoft for finding a loophole - again - and avoiding it by pushing everything to the users and developers? The jurisdiction for allowing such amazing things to happen? The users for accepting that?
I don't know. I really don't know.
- Dennis