After a few days of procrastinating, I finally upgraded to Iceweasel 2.0, that is, Firefox 2.0 minus the trademarked logo. Mysterious are the ways of militantly free open source, but it’s a very nice browser.
Microsoft’s version of the brave, new world was never more apparent than in the Windows Vista EULA:
You may not work around any technical limitations in the software.
In other words, you’re prohibited from downloading and installing any patch or driver to your shiny new Windows Vista OS, unless the patch or driver is provided by Microsoft. Where do you want to go today? Me, I want to run away screaming.
I think I’ll stick to Debian GNU/Linux, for now.
Long time no blog. Shocking as it may seem, I’ve not blogged since September. I’m sure you’ve all missed me.
Anyway, here’s why I blogged today. To put it simply, the Mozilla Foundation uses a trademarked Firefox logo that Debian team cannot distribute with its upcoming Etch release of the Debian OS, and therefore decided to rename the browser Iceweasel. The current license (of the logo) does not allow the reselling of software that includes the Firefox logo, so the renaming was the only option available to the Debian team if they wanted to distribute the browser. (For those of you not in the know, Debian is free software, and you can do whatever you want with the OS, including reselling it for a hefty sum of money.)
Unfortunately, Debian’s taking a lot of heat for the move. The decision to let Debian remain free and untainted by non-free licenses is called anything from “lame” to “disruptive”, and people are arguing that Debian’s strict license policy is hurting the open source movement since Firefox is its flagship product, soon to run on every desktop there is. And the policy is supposedly extra dangerous now, when Microsoft finally decided to upgrade Internet Explorer.
Unfortunately, people are missing the point. This is what open source really is about. The whole development model is about the freedom to do whatever you want with the software, including reselling it. It’s the “free” part that enables fast development, quick and efficient bug tracking, and new versions as fast as you can type apt-get.
Don’t let the open source ideals get lost because of some stupid image that will be changed and forgotten in a few version bumps, anyway.
wine 0.19-1 has now reintroduced XMetaL in my Linux apps repertoir. However, it still crashes if I double-click on a word in the edit window. This rather limits the usefulness of the editor, for now.
wine 0.9.17-1 breaks XMetaL 3.1. So there.
I don’t have the strength to go back to wine 0.9.16-1 right now, so I think I’ll just wait until the Debian package folks catch up. At WineHQ, the current version is 0.9.20…
I was pointed to this by a friend. Scary. Very scary.
ClamAV, my virus hunter for Linux, stopped working today, after an unfortunate update of it and LSB Base (“Linux Standard Base”). Therefore, please don’t send any viruses my way until the fix is in place (the updates are supposed to be uploaded within the next few days; have a look at the bug report).
Up to, and including, wine 0.9.15-1, my installation of XMetaL crashes if I double-click somewhere in the writing area… I wonder if this is because of the reimplementation of the Internet Explorer Active X APIs in wine? I think I have to find a way to continue using Internet Explorer in wine, for now. Or downgrade to 0.9.11-1.
By the way, Internet Explorer doesn’t start in wine 0.9.15-1 but you knew that, didn’t you?
I just wanted to add the above image, from the Autism Prenatal Test site. If you want to use it on your site/blog/car bumper sticker, feel free to do so.
It’s now possible to test for autism in your unborn baby. A blood test, so far with a very limited availability, can be used to scan the fetus for possible autism genes. So the question is: if you knew, would you do it?
Before you start arguing for the parents’ right to choose, please have a look at this site. I won’t force you to read all of it, but at least consider if, given the choice, you’d have allowed Bill Gates to be born. Yeah, I know; I’m a Linux user myself, and a question such as this, even if it is rhetorical, is almost impossible to resist.
Eugenics, anyone?