Free Software & Freee Culture

Free Software and Free Culture
Ahmed Mekkawy AKA linuxawy
[email_address]
http://www.linuxawy.org

ToC
Free Software.
Free Culture.
DRM
The Arabic region.
To know more.

Software Freedom.. Why?
Cause knowledge should always be free.
Cause we have somethings more important to do than reinvent the wheel.
To keep software as a science, not alchemy or witchcraft.

Poor User: Can I have some more salt on the rice please?
Closed FOOD Recipes??
Evil Company: Sorry, cause you have the standard rice edition, you should buy the 'rice home advanced edition' to do that.

Poor User: I guess I'll buy that, cause I want to make it taste better when I invite my friends home.
Evil Company: I'm so sorry you won't be able to use it when you invite your friends home, you'll have to get the 'rice professional” or “rice enterprise” for that.

Poor User: erm.. well this will give me everything i want or there's another trick?
Evil Company: well.. you won't be able to modify it as YOU like, but you'll be able only to choose one of OUR perfect presets.

Poor User: ok then, I will have the professional one and share it with my mom.
Evil Company: Ooops, I forget to tell you that WE can sew you if you give a copy to your mom.

Poor User: Grrr, ok I will make the rice at home and take with me for her.
Evil Company: well, she should have at least standard rice edition, cause WE make the rice only compatible with OUR premium plates, which means you won't be able to carry it with you to any other kitchen that uses other ordinary plates..

Poor User: NOOOOOOOOOoooooooooooo :'((
Evil Company: Bon Appetite :-)

Quote
I guess you could call the belief in sharing of knowledge a philosophy, but I just think it’s a fact. It’s what differentiates science from alchemy or witchcraft. Anybody who doesn’t believe in it is just wearing some serious blinders.
Linus Torvalds

But What will I benefit?
Direct benefits:
You will LEARN alot.
You will INTERACT with a skilled community.
If you are good enough, you name will be recognized.
You will have work made for you for free.
Indirect benefits
The human knowledge is to be summed up.
Monopoly of knowledge will be less.
Someone else (and you) won't have to reinvent the wheel.

4 Software Freedoms
Freedom 0 : to RUN the program for any purpose.
Freedom 1 : to STUDY how the program works, and adopt it to your needs.
Freedom 2: to REDISTRIBUTE copies so you can help your neighbor.
Freedom 3: to IMPROVE the program, and RELEASE your improvements to the public, so that the whole community benefits.

Freedom isn't only in Software
General knowledge: wikipedia
Web Design: OSWD.org, OpenDesigns.org, OpenWebDesign.org
Learning: wikiversity.org, OpenEd, ChemCollective.org
Hardware: OpenCores.org, OpenSPARC.net, OpenMoko.org
Scintific Data: OpenData
And others.

Free Culture
The same idea, why not make things available.
Everyone gets access, and if we can collaborate to make things better.
www.freedomdefined.org
4 Freedoms
Things didn't go easy on the creative stuff, so a new license was introduced, called creative commons.

Creative Commons
Some rights reserved.
Made for creative work, like literature, arts, .. etc. But it's now wildly spread.
There's a big potential that wikipedia go under CC license soon.
Human Readable, Lawyer readable, and machine readable.
arabcommons.com

DRM
DRM == Digital Restrictions Management.
Affects Music, Movies, eBooks, Computers, Mobile Phones, Games.
Companies say that DRM protects the user, while It actually doesn't.
Defected by design campaign www.defectedbydesign.org
Example 1: MacBook's external display.
Example 2: Amazon's kindle: 1984 and animal farm.

The Arabic region
Licensing awareness is very low.
Almost everyone writes “All Rights Reserved” without knowing these rights, and why does he reserve them.
We need to think more open. Try to keep licenses as open as possible, if we need 1 or 2 things then we go for CC.
Try to respect who claim his rights. Piracy is not good, but pushing them to open their resources is much better.
Understand that patents doesn't historically exist in our countries. When Arabs had the power the knowledge was always available for us, so lets try to stick to that as much as we can.

To know more
Free Software, Free Society: Selected Essays of Richard M. Stallman
After the Software Wars: by Keith Curtis
Both books' PDFs are freely downloadable
Revolution OS: Documentary about GNU and Linux, not freely available AFAIK.

Quote
Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. That is our commitment. And we need your help.
Wikimedia Foundation's vision statement.

Free Software & Freee Culture

by Ahmed Mekkawy on Sep 01, 2009

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