Björn’s Fellowship-Blog

robertschuster has already wrote about Greg Kroah-Hartman fun patch which would mark all PCI functions as only able to be used by GPL licensed kernel code.

Today Arjan van de Ven sent a mail with the subject “Linux in a binary world” to the linux kernel mailinglist (LKML). He described a scenario how non-free drivers would hurt linux.

According to heise (german), Linus Torvalds changed a EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL interface to a normal export interface after someone from nvidia asked for it. Arjan van de Ven asked Linus for his position, until now there is no response.

I think beside the legal threats non-free driver are one of the major challenges. I’m afraid that if we offer hardware vendors an easy way to integrate non-free driver into linux and make them feel like this is what users want we could steer in a wrong direction with no turn back.

I have thought about the question "What is Free Culture?" for some time. Benjamin Mako Hill’s "Towards a Standard of Freedom: Creative Commons and the Free Software Movement" encouraged me to write this weblog entry.

Basically i agree with Benjamin Mako Hill. While we have a clear definition for Free Software nobody knows the basic freedoms for culture or can offer a generally accepted definition.

The first question is: What is culture? Is it music, novels, biographies, reference books, manuals, movies, computer-games, (even) software..? Is it all together or just a part of it? Does all the works need the same minimum of freedom or are there differences?

I think regulation is not necessary bad. It always depends on the right balance between the author and the society. In my opinion, if some regulation of the society also creats some useful benefits for the society it’s probably a good tradeoff.

As long as we talk about (functional) software i think the Free Software definition is the right answere. But if we come to computer games, wich is software too, but more entertainment than functionality, i think it’s already no longer clear. I remember that even Richard Stallman has mentioned in one of his speeches that maybe we could make a distinction between the functional part (e.g. game engine) of a game an the entertainment part (e.g. art, levels,…). But it wouldn’t be that easy and if we talk about all the other things which you can classify as culture it become even more difficult.

So the question remains. What is free culture? Will there be ever a definition for free culture? Is it even possible to find a generally accepted definition for all the different kind of works which we call culture? Or is everything we can do offering a variety of licenses like Creative Commons and hope that the authors will make the right decision for every single work?

Could it be a crime to wrap your pass in aluminum foil? It seems like the answer is “yes” if you are on the WSIS and the pass contains a RFID chip. Read more on Bruce Perens blog entry Friday, November 18: Richard Stallman Gets in Trouble with UN Security for Wearing a Tin-Foil Hat

“Knowledge of Future Culture” is the title of a interesting paper, released for the upcoming World Summit on the Information Society in Tunis.
Many known people are part of this paper, e.g. Lawrence Lessig, Richard Stallman an many others.

Auf der diesjährigen Internationalen Funkausstellung (IFA) ist der neue TV-Standard HDTV, welcher das PAL System ablösen soll, dass große Thema. HDTV bietet eine deutlich bessere Bildqualität, was sich am Anfang sehr positiv anhört hat aber auch seine Schattenseiten. “HD-ready”-Geräte haben nämlich auch den Intel Kopierschutz HDCP eingebaut, d.h., dass in Zukunft der Sender entscheiden kann ob ein Programm in HDTV, DVD-, VHS-Qualität oder gar nicht aufgenommen werden kann.

Der Sender Premiere will bereits ab September HDTV Programme anbieten, natürlich mit dem HDCP Kopierschutz. Premiere argumentiert, dass sie ohne dem Kopierschutz keine Filme in HDTV Qualität bekommen würden. Bei genauerer Betrachtung ist diese Argument aber sehr fraglich, da in den USA und Großbritannien bereits HDTV ohne HDCP gesendet wird.

Es bleibt zu hoffen, dass sich HDTV in der Kombination mit HDCP nicht durchsetzen wird. Nach einer nicht repräsentativen Umfrage der Zeitung Sat+Kabel lehnen 80% HDTV ab, wenn sie über den Kopierschutz informiert sind.

Mehr dazu: http://www.beepworld.de/members74/chanceninfo/hdtv.htm

i have created a small fellowship button for my homepage, maybe you like it too.
The button is quite simple, but for a first try i think it’s ok. Of course everyone can use and/or modify this button.

Today i have looked at www.gnufriends.org for the first time since some months and i was really confused… my browser sends me to www.fsfe.org? What happens? Does gnufriends.org no longer exists? Was this always a site from the FSFE or why gnufriends.org now redirect to fsfe.org?