Older blog entries for mpawlo (starting at number 14)

Wired ran an interesting piece by Russ Mitchell in the latest issue of the magazine. Mitchell focus on the so called war between Microsoft and Linux and why Linux will have a hard time winning such a war, and especially in respect of the desktops. The article was only available in the paper issue, but is now also available online.

Re ad the article.

17 Oct 2001 (updated 17 Oct 2001 at 08:04 UTC) »
As reported by Gnuheter, Richard M Stallman does not want to be associated with the open source movement. We all know that and now the editor of the Dr Dobbs Journal knows it too. Apparently, Dr Dobbs ran an article where Richard M Stallman was associated with open source. In an open letter, Stallman explains why this is utterly wrong:

If the House Un-American Activities Committee asked me, "Are you now or have you ever been a supporter of the open source movement," I could proudly and cheerfully say no. I've been campaigning since 1984 for *free software*-- free as in freedom.

Read the letter.

I was sorry to learn today that the Swedish branch of DX3 filed it's petition in bancruptcy. I don't know if this is limited in respect of the Swedish branch, DX3 Nordic AB, or if the same financial problems concern the rest of the DX3 Group.

It was DX3's mission to be "the leading provider of back-end content distribution and promotion solutions, bridging the gap between the traditional entertainment industries and the revolution of direct distribution via the Internet and emerging wireless and digital formats".

DX3 was funded by venture capital firm New Media Spark (the principal owner).

More on DX3: http://www.dx3.net/

It seems to be very hard to commercially succed in creating an alternative online music distribution venture. Do you think stricted copyright enforcement would endorse the the online music distribution or does the financial problem derive from elsewhere than the legal grounds?

11 Oct 2001 (updated 11 Oct 2001 at 21:48 UTC) »

Getting a lot of hits on my home page deriving from Advogato today. If you read this and you are not one of the usual Advogato readers, please let me know how you found your way here.

Interesting article published in Stanford Technology Law Review.

"In this Article, I have two goals: First, I will suggest a possible reason why parts of legal academia have reacted so favorably to the open source philosophy. Second, I will take a closer look at the philosophy itself and try to show that it is conceptually flawed."

So, here is an odd and very fresh story (I just spoke to Declan at Wired and he will most probably write something about it).

Reuters picture of pro-taliban rallies in Bangladesh:

http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/p/nm/ 20011009/wl/imdf09102001085522a.html

Check the picture by the ear of Osama Bin Laden on the poster. Yes, it is indeed Bert of Sesame Street.

Today this picture was published in Swedens leading tabloid (removed from the online edition after a few hours):

http:// harvard.pawlo.com/bangladesh.jpg

Check by the ear again.

Of course I know about the Evil Bert web site ( http://www.fractalcow.com/ bert/bert.htm ), but this is something else.

This seems to be actual footage of the rallies.

It looks like whoever made the poster included the picture of Usama Bin Laden and Bert of Sesame Street found at the < following URL:

http://www.angelfire.com/de/cheatsbert/ p3laden.html

So this is what copyright infringement on the Internet will lead to in practice .-D

Amazing - isn't it!?

Regards

Mikael Pawlo

Some evangelism this week as well. Picked up a glove dropped by Nicklas Lundblad. Lundblad wrote an article published in the Swedish equivalent of ComputerWorld, Computer Sweden.

Anyway, Lundblad wrote a confused article on free software, mixing it with both open source, Eric S Raymond and free as in gratis. I just felt I had to set the record straight, why I wrote a 8000+ characters text explaining the fundamentals of free software, the difference from open source and the concept of source code as an architecture (the Lessig theory). Basically, I state that Richard M Stallman is not an idiot and that RMS knows that not everyone will start to code new Microsoft Word programs if the source code is available, but that freedoms are important in a society even when not everyone is excercising his or her rights.

Something like that .-)

Further, some thoughts on the need for businesses to grasp this concept and a possible need for other regulation if nothing happens over time.

I named my article "Fri programvara ar inte gratis" (Free software is not gratis).

I hope this clear things up a little.

Following my reply was two different replies from Mr Lundblad. Lundblad wrote one reply for my longer version article and one for the shorter version.

If you understand Swedish you might want to read something of this:

My article - long version (published at www.idg.se) .

My article - shorter version (published in Computer Sweden).

Nicklas Lundblads original article (published in Computer Sweden).

Nicklas Lundblads reply (published at www.idg.se).

Nicklas Lundblads second reply (published in Computer Sweden).

23 Sep 2001 (updated 23 Sep 2001 at 15:38 UTC) »

I just got a fresh link with the evangelism of the day, some Richard M Stallman pop.

As most of you probably know Voidmain has put a Stallman speech into a pop context in "Follow the GNU". The concept is similiar to the Larry Lessig pop tune I thought we knew that:

http://mp3.com/voidmain

If you do not like MP3 you might like the fact that I converted the MP3-file to the free Ogg Vorbis file format:

http:// harvard.pawlo.com/gnu.ogg

The Lessig tune:

http:// harvard.pawlo.com/lessig.ogg

or in Mp3 format:

http://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/lessig/content/ index.html

Use this code if you want to join the "Support freedom" campaign hosted by Lycos (more info on ht tp://clubs.lycos.com/live/events/september11.asp ). There might be other initiatives like this, but this is the first one I've seen and it's easy to contribute. /Mikael

<BR><DIV ALIGN="CENTER">
<A HREF="http://clubs.lycos.com/live/events/september11.asp"&gt ;
<IMG SRC="http://a1032.g.akamai.net/f/1032/81/30m/www.gamesville. lycos.com/art_gv/ribbon_small.gif" ALT="[Flag Campaign icon]" WIDTH="49" HEIGHT="86" BORDER="0" ALIGN="MIDDLE">
<BR>
Support freedom</A>
</DIV>
<BR>

The EU declares a moment of silence, CET 12.00 - 12.03, on Friday, September 14. All governments in the Member States urges upon citizens to join in a moment of unity and mourning.

Official information from http://www.eu2001.be/ :

Nicole Fontaine, President of the European Parliament, Guy Verhofstadt, President of the European Council, Romano Prodi, President of the European Commission, Louis Michel, President of the General Affairs Council, and Javier Solana, High Representative for the Common Foreign and Security Policy of the European Union, hereby announce, on behalf of the European Union, that Friday, 14 September will be a day of mourning and solidarity with the American people. The heads of state and government of the 15 EU Member States will issue a joint statement at 6 a.m. (Brussels time). At 12 noon (Brussels time), a 3-minute silence will be observed, with all activity coming to a standstill.

Countries that are candidates for EU accession are also invited to take part in this display of solidarity.

In observing this silence, the people of the European Union wish to express their deep sympathy with the grief and pain suffered by the people of the United States of America.

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