August, 2006
You are looking at posts that were written in the month of August in the year 2006.
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Free as in speech, not as in beer
Posted on August 26th, 2006 by Chris.
Categories: Chris, General/Misc., Philosophy, Programming.
For some members of the open source movement, open source is the moral compass of the software industry. Richard Stallman would strongly disagree if you said “open source is about giving away software for free.” Rather, open source is about freedom–giving everyone the freedom to see how software works and use it without restrictions. At the heart of this is a broad intuitive idea that you can’t control ideas like they were physical products–that once someone gives me a piece of software, just like any real life object, it’s my right to see how it works and use it in any way I see fit.
Now, eight years after the term open source was first coined, we see two of the fruits of this movement–Linux and Firefox–gaining lots of public attention. On the other side, we see open source server technologies like Apache with an enormous foothold in the industry. Open source has gained traction, but does this mean that open source has succeeded in fulfilling a greater social mission?
No. Read on.
Computers suck
Posted on August 25th, 2006 by Tim.
Categories: General/Misc..
Chris made a good point in his last blog entry. Computers suck. So I’ve decided to rethink how computers work. Here is my new set of guidlines for how computers should work.
1) Computers should provide an intuitive interface that painlessly allows users to do stuff.
2) Computers should continue to be this way and not degrade over time.
Thats it. Those are my rules to how computers should work. The problem is that this is extremely hard.
Interlude from Not Good Enough
Posted on August 23rd, 2006 by Chris.
Categories: Chris, General/Misc..
In honor of SourceForge’s inability or unwillingness to find servers that are close to me and save on network traffic, I am downloading a copy of UnMediator from Ishikawa, Japan. Here’s to SourceForge and a million years of open source downloading!
Not Good Enough (Part II)
Posted on August 23rd, 2006 by Chris.
Categories: Business/The Software Industry, Chris, General/Misc., Product Design, UI Design.
If you’re used to a computer, you may find this a bit disconcerting. But you’re dealing with a magical machine, and simply by knowing how to use it, you’re a magician.
Take a look at your keyboard for a second.