jxself.org

Two important movements have emerged: the Right to Repair movement and the Free Software movement.

As a free software activist, I find the existence of nonfree software, no matter how seemingly innocuous, to be a moral and ethical injustice.

A troubling truth emerges in a world increasingly reliant on software: governments sometimes act as gatekeepers, dictating where code can roam.

Friends and fellow freedom fighters, gather 'round!

With knowledge of the history of computing, free software, and GNU it's possible to extract some meaning from the verses. 1:1 "In the beginning, there was the Machine.

I've previously talked about why dial-up internet is better, and why VHS tapes are better than DVDs and Blu-Ray.

In software, the concept of freedom and the question about what rights the software users should have often seemed to take a backseat to things like features and functionality, deeming the software to be "powerful" if the software has enough.

'Twas the night before Freedom, in the cybernetic gleam, No processor churned, no hard drive did scream.

Have you ever marveled at the wildebeest migration in a nature documentary?

In a prior post, I discussed Mozilla's trademark policy and its implications for free software.

Red Hat's been talked about lately due to their recent decision to only provide source code to their customers and not the public.

Apple announced a multiyear, multibillion-dollar agreement with Broadcom, further cementing its commitment to the erosion of software freedom and user rights.

I wanted to write about my experience with LibrePlanet, and what the theme "Charting the Course" means for me.

Back in May 2022 a conversation in the FSF's IRC channel on Libera.Chat got me thinking that that there may be a benefit to having a version of CC0 that does address patents.

Following up on Why Dial-Up Internet Is Better it seemed appropriate for some satire on DVD and Blu-ray DRM, UOP, etc.

(To the tune of White Christmas by Bing Crosby) I'm dreaming of a GNU Christmas Just like the ones I used to know Where the software's free And people share it To hear terminal bells in the snow I'm dreaming of a GNU Christmas With every line of code I wr…

I've received some questions about the future of my 32-bit x86 kernel builds so I thought I'd answer by putting out something public.

When computer scientist Gordon Moore first formulated his thesis on the exponentially growing speed and power of integrated circuits in 1965, no one at the time could have predicted the prescience of his observations.

By Bradley M.

The increasing privatization of space travel has brought renewed interest in the potential for crewed spaceflights to the moon and Mars, with private ventures such as SpaceX and Amazon's Blue Origin setting their sights on some of the most ambitious space…

I have found that I really agree with the ethical and social issues that RMS brings up in his talks about free software.

My kernel packages for 32- and 64-bit x86 now support UEFI Secure Boot.

I've published a science fiction flash fiction story at https://jxself.org/git/?

I've started building Linux-libre kernel packages for RISC-V in the freesh repository, starting with version 4.19.1.

by Alexandre Oliva Back when I was young, people were taught not to install or run software from untrusted parties, very much like not to accept candy from strangers, or not to let the Big Bad Wolf in.

"CQD CQD SOS Titanic Position 41.44 N 50.24 W.

Following up on a topic that I started back in 2015, here's some more about contributions that Star Trek made to society.

I began maintaining my APT repository for Linux-libre, graciously hosted by the Free Software Foundation Latin America, in September 2011.

Version 4.14 of the kernel named Linux was released today.

Digital technology seems to be everywhere.

Someone recently asked me "in what way the freedoms of the readers/spectators/... of an artistic work are harmed if that work cannot be commercially used?"

Occasionally, entire print runs of publications, often thousands of copies, are recalled from bookstores before the public can get their hands on them.

I've previously written about things that don't allow modification (aka "derivative works".)

Someone recently pointed me to Jonathan Riddell's blog post "In Defence for Permissive Licences; KDE licence policy update."

This is not a happy time: My mother recently got her own Facebook account.

Dial-up is considered a very obsolete and rather unfavorable way to connect to the internet simply due to its poor connection speed.

Software Freedom Conservancy is trying to change to an individual-supported, instead of corproate-supported, model and is doing a fundraising campaign to that end.

I am sometimes asked how to convince somone to use free software.

For as long as the libreCMC and LibreWRT projects have existed, their core focus has been to bring Free Software to embedded devices, some of which have WiFi chipsets.

I've begun maintaining an APT repository for VLC.

A discussion on IRC inspired me to write about the problems with licenses that do not allow derivative works.

At LibrePlanet 2015, I agreed with someone by saying "Make it so."

I've been self-hosted since 1999, and always push that option when talking to people.

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It's possible you're going to hear some anti-GPL stuff.

The United Stated Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) defines a trademark as "words, names, symbols, sounds, or colors that distinguish goods and services from those manufactured or sold by others and to indicate the source of the goods."

It's been a few months since the last time travel expedition where I go dig up ancient game source code and then pull it forward in time so it can be compiled and run on modern systems, so I decided it was time for another.

I realized that I never made a blog post on this topic to share the work done on pulling a classic game forward into the modern world, so here it is.

Here's an implementation of version 1.3 of the Skein cryptographic hash function.

At the beginning of September I introduced my new GPG key and I've been slowly transitioning everything over to that new key.