You are now entering the headquarters of the Software Liberation Front, a very small army of liberators come to destroy the oppression of the masses by the agency of software despotism. Only by smashing tyranny can we free ourselves from our chains.
You do love to smash tyranny -- don't you, comrade?
It seems that predatory closed-source software business Hancom got dragged into court over failure to pay protection money to predatory copyleft software business Artifex when using Ghostscript as part of its Hancom Office software. The Artifex business model involves claims it owns all representations of Ghostscript software, including any that may reside in your brain, and thus demands people either pay money directly to Artifex for doing anything with it where other people can see they do it or pay for the resources to comply with the absurdly complex demands of GPL compliance. This protection racket matches quite a common revenue scheme where the GPL comes into play, claiming the software is "open" and "free" to garner undeserved good will from credulous members of the copyleftist commune while tricking people into violating license terms to demand payment later.
With any luck, the court decision that declares the GPL to be enforceable in all its particulars may hasten the stampede of wildebeests away from worship at the feet of the FSF. See more details in the Quartz article, claiming A federal court has ruled that an open-source license is an enforceable contract. We cannot vouch for the legal rectitude of the phrasing or accuracy of the article.
The glorious revolution comes around again! This is the second launch of the Software Liberation Front website. As you can see (if you're inclined to look closely enough), this is a hot mess right now -- hackish, thrown-together, probably ill-considered. It is the product of maybe ten minutes of actual effort so far, plus the strained shoulders and tolerance that comes from another half hour of patting ourselves on the back.
Expect more soonish. Hopefully we can live up to that expectation.
Fuck you for telling people they can't combine GNU and Sun open source software. Fuck you for telling people they can't share something with other people without also getting a fucking webhosting account for several years. Fuck you and your legions of zombie cultists who call me evil for distributing free/libre/open source software. I will not punch you, but I'd consider it a suitable apology if you would go die in a fire.
Love,
ren
Fuck you for copying other people's ideas (poorly), screwing them up just enough to make them incompatible, and calling it innovation. Fuck you for hiring an obvious psychopath like Ballmer to run your shitty company like he's at literal war with everything right and good in the software world. Fuck you for letting your company spend eight years sitting on critical security vulnerabilities then denounce and crucify people who try to finally galvanize the company into action by publicly pointing out how dangerous it is that your marketers intentionally lie to people about the security of your software. Fuck you for vertically integrated compatibility prisons, overpriced crap, and lawsuit threats aimed at hobbyists just trying to help each other out. Luckily, you've already stopped contributing to the disaster that is your legacy, but until everyone recognizes it for the monumental hindrance to quality software development that it is, justice will not have been served.
Love,
ren
Hell, no. The commies are in the FSF (Fettered Software Fanboys, sometimes erroneously called the Free Software Foundation). Well, maybe someone here is a commie. We don't really know. Commies are sneaky, and we don't check political registrations at the door.
We are all opposed to software tyranny, however.
Hell, no. The fascists are in the BSA (Buggy Software Advocates, sometimes erroneously called the Business Software Alliance). Well, maybe someone here is a fascist. We don't really know. Fascists are fibbers, and we don't check political registrations at the door.
Use the COIL. Like an anaconda, it can constrict around the Patchy License (sometimes called the Apache License, but that's culturally insensitive) and crush its bones, leaving a bloody, misshapen wreck where a subtle enemy of Freedom! used to stand.
You should use 9front, because it has "front" in the name, and we're the Software Liberation Front, plus 9front is copyfree, and we like their style (sometimes). We don't actually use 9front, though. I mean, we do have to get things done sometimes. Wait -- Joe? Yeah, I think Joe uses it. That must be why he hasn't done anything useful lately.
Copyright, like God, is dead. Let its corpse serve only to guard against its resurrection. You may do anything with this work that copyright law would normally restrict so long as you retain the above notice(s), this license, and the following misquote and disclaimer of warranty with all redistributed copies, modified or verbatim. You may also replace this license with the Open Works License, available at the http://owl.apotheon.org website.
Copyright is dead. Copyright remains dead, and we have killed it. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world of censorship has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become authors simply to appear worthy of it?
- apologies to Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
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