Posts Tagged ‘free software movement’

Free Software Songs and Videos Collection – (Anthem of Free Software) various interpretations

Friday, November 18th, 2011

Richard Stallman picture

I've gathered a collection of 15 Audio and Video songs dedicated to the Free Software / Open Source movement . All of the songs are based on the The Free Software Song Anthem written by Richard Mathew Stallman in the year 1991. The motive of the song is a Traditional Bulgarian song called Sadi Moma Bqla Loza – translated to bulgarian to something like Maid is Planting white Vines
The original Free Software Song symbolizes all free software and the Free Software Movement and GNU and is in the Bulgarian unique / specific folk rhythm of 7 / 8 beats .

Most of the songs which I post hereby could also be found and downloaded from GNU's official Free Software Song page
However some of the songs were only available from Youtube in the non-free format Flash Video (flv) . Hence, since the songs were dedicated to Free Software and apparently were being spread in a non-free format they either was missing any licensing or licensed under GFDL free music / art GNU like license.
To fix up this irragularity and add some freedom in terms of audio format of spreading, I've downloaded them and used ffmpeg2theora to convert the songs to the Free / Open Standard format Ogg Vorbis
I'm quite sure that many people, who use Ubuntu or Linux Mint are pretty much unfamiliar with the Free Software Songs existence, also many people most likely have never heard the Free Software Songs or even those who heard it have rarely heard more than 2 or 3 of the song variations.
Hereby, I'm sure many people who are lovers of Free Software will highly benefit and get inspired to continue in the Free Software by listening to these post shared little Free Software Song Collection .

The covers of the Original version publicly sang by Richard Stallman are in different musical genres, some of the song performances are in Folklore, played on Piano other covers are performed by musical bands in pop / punk en popular music styles, there are one person performances, cheerful christmas like soundings, 8 bit free software song, Metal free software variations etc. In the collection I've included also few other nice songs which are propaganda on free software, even though not a cover of the Free Software Song , I found them myself worthy to be included in the collection..:

Herein you can download or listen all the Free Software Songs version (Enjoyment is guaranteed! 😉 ):















Fenster-Free-Software-Song.ogg
Free_Software_Song_en_español.ogv
Free_Software_Song_feat._Flat_Eric.ogv
Jono_Bacon_-_-Free_Software_Song_2_Metal_Version.ogv
Markushaist_piano_-free-software-song.ogg
Metal_Free_Software_Song_v2.0.ogv
Stallman_Free_Software_Song_Video_320x240.ogv
The_Gnu_Song.ogv
The_Pink_Stainless_Tail_Free_Software_Song.ogv
free-software-song-herzog.ogg
free-software-song-rhythmic.ogg
free_software_song_sunnata.ogg
freesoft.ogg
jonobacon-freesoftwaresong2.ogg
pjj-and-hairyone-freesoftwaresong.ogg
I've also prepared a bundle containing all the 15 Free Software Songs which you can download from here
Enjoy the nice music! Don't forget to share it with everyone you could among with educating the people how important it is to value their freedom in this age of technological human enslavement 😉
 

Is Free software communistic in essence. My 5 cents rant on Free Software’s ideology

Wednesday, October 9th, 2013

linux-because-microsoft-is-for-capitalists-running-dos

I've seen people online blaming Stallman and Free Software Movement for being communistic. I've thought over it for a while so decided to give my 5 cents rant on that. Obviously there is still people in America who doesn't make difference between capitalism, communism and socialism. Yes it is true, GNU / Linux and Free Software are socialistic in essence and obviously Stallman's ideas are close to Socialists ideas, but for sure in his essence its not against capitalism and even less against democracy. So why there are still people recognizing free software as communistic? I think it is due to their mis-understanding that Free Software doesn't stand for making people equal but it is for giving chance to everyone who has interest to learn and doesn't have the financial possibility to do it. By its existince free software gives the poor Afrika's population legal way to install and use software free of charge. The idea of free software is purely scientific, there are plenty of researchers who denied patenting their invention because they wanted to share their findings with the world like Willhelm Roentgen's finding of X-rays. FS is for giving to society it is for software for people who should not be necessary divided by social status or bank account. Free Software puts out bariers since its fosters a spirit of community so much lost in our very divided century, it makes people involved in FS opened to itself and being friends no matter of social status. It is to make people free to choose and do whatever they like with each software it is about transperancy and equal start to programmers and computer enthusiasts. I'll be curious to hear people's opinion?

The lack of sharing in modern world – One more reason why sharing Movies and any data on the Internet should be always Legal

Saturday, July 7th, 2012

Importance of sharing in modern digital society, sharing should be legal, Sharing caring
 I've been thinking for a lot of time analyzing my already years ongoing passion for Free Software, trying to answer the question "What really made me be a keen user and follower of the ideology of the free software movement"?
I came to the conclusion it is the sharing part of free software that really made me a free software enthusiast. Let me explain ….

In our modern world sharing of personal goods (physical goods, love for fellows, money, resources etc.) has become critically low.The reason is probably the severely individualistic Western World modern culture model which seems to give good economic results.
Though western society might be successful in economic sense in man plan it is a big failure.
The high standard in social culture, the heavy social programming, high level of individualism and the collapsing spirituality in majority of people is probably the major key factors which influenced the modern society to turn into such a non-sharing culture that is almost ruling the whole world nations today.

If we go back a bit in time, one can easily see the idea and general philosophy of sharing is very ancient in nature. It was sharing that for years helped whole societies and culture grow and mature. Sharing is a fundamental part of Christian faith and many other religions as well and has been a people gathering point  for centuries.
However as modern man is more and more turning to the false fables of the materialistic origin of  man (Darwininsm), sharing is started seeing as unnecessary . Perhaps the decreased desire in people to share is also the reason why in large number people started being  self-interest oriented as most of us are nowadays.

As we share less and less of our physical and spiritual goods, our souls start being more and more empty day after day. Many people, especially in the western best developed societies; the masses attitude towards sharing is most evidently hostile.
Another factor which probably decreased our natural human desire to share is technocracy and changing of communication from physical as it used to be until few dacades to digital today.

The huge shift of communication from physical to digital, changes the whole essence of basic life, hence I believe at least the distorted sharing should be encouraged on the Internet (file movies and programs sharing) should be considered normal and not illegal..
I believe Using Free Software instead of non-free (proprietary) one is another thing through which we can stimulate sharing. If we as society appreciate our freedom at all  and  care for our children future, it is my firm conviction, we should do best to keep sharing as much as we can in both physical and digital sense.

Triumph of the Nerds – A documentary about the rise of Personal Computers

Saturday, October 8th, 2011

Triumph of the Nerds movie cover

Triumph of the Nerds is 3 parts documentary movie on how the Personal Computer was developed. The movie features interviews with Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Steve Ballmer, Allan Paul and many other IT veterans who played key roles for the development of the Personal Computer ,

The movie is an interesting watching for people interested into Information Technology and gives some minor insights on the starred interviewed people and their life philosophy. It was interesting times back then and it seems many of the guys who could participate in the PCs were very lucky, where others who made key developments which are de-facto standards today went into history without much being remembered.

Now the trends which these man set in world’s development is not nice. Even though PC brough a lot of fun in our every lives it suddenly started taking over our privacy and made the humanity divided.
The movie is a story of a man motivated by greed arrogancy and exploitation. Even though the movie has historical value it doesn’t even mention about Free Software Richard Stallman and the free software movement.

The movie talks about the development of CP/M the predecessor of Quick and Dirty DOS (QDOS), MS-DOS Windows 1,2,3, Windows 95 etc.

It also tries to picture the events around the raise and fall of IBM and OS/2.

The most notable parts for me in the movie are the showing off of some old computer hardware and Mainframe servers as well as the quick explanation on how Mainframes irons predecessed the PC. Another interesting moment in the movie is displaying Steve Jobs demonstrating the Xerox’s Alto graphical interface. Talking about Jobs it was quite shocking for the world his sudden death just 3 days ago so (R.I.P).

The movie author Robert X. Cringery stress out in the movie the great struggle between the so called “the blue Elephant” IBM and the just emerging early Microsoft Corporation

Triumph of the Nerds slightly mentions Digital Equipment Corporation / DEC or COMPAQ as later known. DEC is company less known in todays world which had historically great impact on computer market, so its a pity the movie part mentioning DEC is so short.

What the movie misses is to aforemention About’s Digital Equipment VMS operating system known under the code name OpenVMS. OpenVMS even of today is believed by many to be the most secure Operating System ever developed.
The movie part that talks about DEC is the second part of movie it shows a nice COMPAQ portable computer.

DEC Compaq portable II Computer

One should admit COMPAQ portable Computer is a really trendy for its time, Also the way it sticks the keyboard to the screen does remind seriously the opening and closing of a modern laptop 😉

The movie includes some interesting, so called crash courses where the movie author gives some insight on elementary computing, so for those new to informatix the movie will surely be educative as well, though for a UNIX gurus this elementary computing scenes will look kinda ridiculous 😉

One serious flaw with this movie is the complete lack of interviews with Richard Stallman and the importance of Free Software for the development of modern PC and the influence of the free software culture on todays latest Macintosh and PC developments.

A related movie which probably most IT geeks already know / seen is Pirates of the Sillicon Valley
, hence large chunk of Triumph of the Nerds gives another point of view on the ideas and stories presented in Triumph of the Nerds

Triumph of the Nerds brings back some good memories of the glorious PC computer past for all of us who had been a DR-DOS/MS-DOS and Windows 3.11 / 95 users.