Re: [Trisquel-users] On the NSA targeting readers of Linux Journal as extremists
Perhaps by extremist forum they meant forum used by extremists, presumably as a source of information about anti-surveillance measures. It would be sad if concern by law-abiding citizens about snooping is considered extreme behaviour. If it is, then it is probably thanks to the desire of so many to make their lives public via social networking platforms. The implications of such data falling into the wrong hands sooner or later will not be realised until it is too late to do anything about it, because it can never ever be deleted entirely once copied.
Re: [Trisquel-users] NetGear PTV300 (Miracast Receiver) Firmware GPL v2
I didn't look into the firmware for this device although am a bit skeptical it is actually 100% free. There are a lot of things that are GNU GPL licensed and not actually free due to bits of non-free software that the code is dependent on. That said it would be odd for them to release 100% of the code for the firmware of a device that appears to only work with MS Windows and is dependent on a propritary technology from Intel called WiDi. From what I gather Intel WiDi is not supported on GNU/Linux (as free software or otherwise).
[Trisquel-users] Developing free software
I've been programming for a few years, but not so much lately. I used Delphi (object-pascal) in the past, so I was thinking about using Lazarus, but it seems like some libraries in Lazarus was taken out (license-related I think). I've been looking at NetBeans (Java) and QT (seems to support multiple languages), but can anyone recommend any good tools for visual development, maybe a good all-round option in general?
Re: [Trisquel-users] Why the GPL doesnt focus on freedom keynote from OSCON
This has been discussed many times in these forums. Extracted from https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-recommendations.html : There are only a couple of kinds of projects that we think should not have any copyleft at all. The first is very small projects. We use 300 lines as our benchmark: when a software package's source code is shorter than that, the benefits provided by copyleft are usually too small to justify the inconvenience of making sure a copy of the license always accompanies the software. The second is projects that implement free standards that are competing against proprietary standards, such as Ogg Vorbis (which competes against MP3 audio) and WebM (which competes against MPEG-4 video). For these projects, widespread use of the code is vital for advancing the cause of free software, and does more good than a copyleft on the project's code would do. General info about licenses: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html#SoftwareLicenses
Re: [Trisquel-users] On the NSA targeting readers of Linux Journal as extremists
If Linux Journal attracts extremists to such a degree that ALL people who visit their website are tagged and filed into some system of suspects, then I just don't know what to say or think. Remember what the original quote was: The NSA is also tracking anyone who visits the popular online Linux publication, Linux Journal, which the NSA refers to as an “extremist forum” in the [XKeyscore] source code. There is more at Linux Journal. http://www.linuxjournal.com/ check out their front page! Linux Journal has a circulation of nearly a million and so does The New Yorker. Newsweek has around one and a half million I think. These numbers seem pretty mainstream to me, hardly the hot bed hangout of extremists. Same with GNU/Linux and all the GPL licensed software. “The GPL licenses more software than MicroSoft and Oracle put together. The GPL is roughly an order of magnitude larger than SAP, the largest commercial producer of software in the European Union.” --Eben Moglin http://youtu.be/FI1CoeqyD5o?t=2m44s When will the hysteria end? Let no one entertain the idea that GNU/Linux or free software is odd, small, or extreme.
Re: [Trisquel-users] Can't block a subdomain in /etc/hosts
I think /etc/hosts.deny and /etc/hosts.allow are files you have to edit and you would have to add somthing like .facebook.com to block all the subdomains You could read the man page of hosts.deny using man hosts.deny
Re: [Trisquel-users] Developing free software
I prefer QtCreator for GUI development and I write most of my programs in C++. I've never used Pascal since I switched to free software. I don't like Java, as I prefer native code. QtCreator is in the Trisquel repositories and can be installed using: apt-get install qtcreator
Re: [Trisquel-users] Developing free software
I don't like Java either for the same reason. I will have a closer look at QT. Thanks! :)
[Trisquel-users] Re : Developing free software
Both GTK+ and Qt have bindings for all popular languages. If you stick to Pascal: http://www.freepascal.org/packages/gtk.html http://wiki.freepascal.org/Qt_Interface However, it may be a good idea to learn a more modern and, today, more popular language such as Python, which follows as well the object-oriented paradigm. Here are the bindings of GTK+ and Qt for Python: https://wiki.gnome.org/Projects/PyGObject http://www.riverbankcomputing.com/software/pyqt/ As for the IDE, I don't use any (Emacs rocks) but, as far as I understand, Eclipse remains the most popular. Whatever the language. Even Pascal: http://sourceforge.net/projects/pascaline/ And, really, you should not use any graphical tool to create GUI. The code that is produced is terrible (with absolute coordinates and so on) and not portable. You need to learn about layouts.
Re: [Trisquel-users] Developing free software
Without the key information of what you're thinking of developing and what the target environments are any advice will be vague and approximate at best because it is always a case of horses for courses. That said I can say definitively from the free software point of view not Java or anything targeting Gnome's Mono engine. They're both proprietary originated systems and have a range of patents on them which might bite the free software community later on. This is also the FSF advice. If you're setting about writing GUI applications then the general wisdom at present is you should use a language with automatic memory management - handcrafted memory management does less well on larger projects and makes for additional coding and debugging time. So combining this with Qt as you've mentioned for RAD you might try Python, KDE's qdevelop with its python plug-ins, Qtdesigner etc and later in development profile the program for performance hot spots and recode them in C/C++. But the best advice for performance has always been to look at your algorithms first, poor ones are what eat the CPU cycles usually. Now for some opinions on related matters which others might find contentious. Free software and open source software has a lot of apps which are developed for one widget set or another. The various desktop environments have each a smaller range of apps targeting them. I suspect this is because people fall into the 'popularity trap' RMS mentioned and want their app to run in a wide range of desktop environments including proprietary ones. IMO free desktop environments are in need of a full range of apps specific for them so that we have the hope of a future 'killer app' bringing the cause new users. So choose a DE. Further I believe free software developers should deliberately ignore users of non-free systems. If users of such system want a specific free software app, let them port a fork of it themselves - the free software community should not spend time on it. The idea that we have enough free software developers is a myth, it was known in the late 80s that the demand for software development exceeded the world economy's ability to pay for it and the situation is worse now[1]. So IMO free software developers should not waste their time, which is in a sense a community resource, on pandering to people who RMS justifiably calls fools. Combining the above two with RMS's GNU 30th speech point of 'people are picking low hanging fruit.' Don't do the 'me too' thing of writing yet another media player etc. It's mere vanity. I'm not saying you have to write a large super app. But e.g. go look in a computer store at some of those apps that cost $50 or under. Things like a GUI outliner (which there are a selection of for the Mac), or a clone of 'Write Your Own Novel (Professional)' are a much better proposition. They add to the variety of free software. Remember FSF canon allows you to use non-free software in order to code a replacement. Similarly free software is especially in need of more games. Lastly, a word on the supposed 'wisdom' that developers should use a bleeding edge distro like Parabola GNU/Linux. I find it very hard not to indulge the British habit of swearing at such nonsense. I have over 30 years in software and am under various NDAs etc so I can't give details but I have seen sums with lots of zeros go down the tubes from this practice. Developers must have a very stable development machine. Use a chroot/LXC container/Parabola under KVM or whatever for the target environment, but keep your actual development desktop O/S stable, the less change the better. So set up you development environment on Trisquel, hand compile any additional libraries you need and set up some virtualised targets. You'll need to for the other GNU FSDG distros once you've released your app anyway. [1] If you think about this - there not being enough money to pay for the software we need you will realise that the open source community's purported reasons for success are vacuous. The reality it is because the code can be shared / modified etc as guaranteed by the four freedoms they are riding on an economic incentive to make software for a lot less money. They may have a lot of users but they are fooling themselves if they think there's any other reason than money for them being there. The free software community OTOH has grown and is about an ethical commitment, the fact that there will always be free riders doesn't detract from our achievements, we've never pretended to ourselves we have some quality magic or anything like that. Leny
[Trisquel-users] Re : Why the GPL doesnt focus on freedom keynote from OSCON
Well, that is different: free software must be buildable with free tools but can be use, i.e., executed for any purpose (freedom 0). A free font can be used in a copyrighted document.
Re: [Trisquel-users] Re : Why the GPL doesnt focus on freedom keynote from OSCON
It is a perfectly witless proposition, has the fool never heard of the Tragedy of the Commons? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons
[Trisquel-users] Re : Why the GPL doesnt focus on freedom keynote from OSCON
Most programs under the GNU licenses are not GNU programs. And their copyrights are not assigned to the FSF. Even GNU programs do not necessarily have their copyright assigned to the FSF: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/why-assign.html The copyright assignment is entirely independent from the license. It is stating that the author of the work is not who wrote it but the third entity that it was assigned to. One can understand why some programmers are reluctant to sign such assignments! Anyway, they are particularly useful when the work is written by tens (or more) of people, some potentially dead, and the license needs to be enforced or a decision (e.g., switch to a newer version of the license) needs to be taken. If the copyright holder is the FSF, one can be sure the decision will never be to make proprietary derivatives. It is hard to say so of any other entity. As for GNOME, here is its policy on copyright assignment: https://wiki.gnome.org/action/show/FoundationBoard/Resources/CopyrightAssignment
Re: [Trisquel-users] Selene Media Encoder
Interested to know that HandBrake is now back in the repos, I made some tests to check if it's now FAAC-free. Unfortunately, it seems that someone just imported HandBrake sources from the official PPA, and included that in the Trisquel repo without making any change. The encoding option for FAAC is still in place, producing playable MPEG-4 AAC streams. Even the source packages does include the FAAC sources bundled. For those looking into using HandBrake without FAAC, there are binaries available for both Toutatis and Belenos. Get them from here: Trisquel 6.0 http://tep.shoutwiki.com/wiki/Building#HandBrake Trisquel 7.0 http://packages.ubuntu.com/search?keywords=handbrakesuite=trusty
Re: [Trisquel-users] Developing free software
I don't think I'll stick with Pascal - like you said, it's probably better to use a more modern language. I'll have a look a Python as well. :)
[Trisquel-users] Compile Trisquel from Source
The Trisquel sources are available on the download page. However, when I extract the image to a folder, inside I see just Ubuntu software packages, nothing more. I don't have the slightest clue as to how to recompile this once I'm done modifying it. Could I have some help?
Re: [Trisquel-users] Developing free software
As you know programming already this online book will do http://www.diveinto.org/python3/ The repo packages for the relevant pyqt all start python3-pyqt4
Re: [Trisquel-users] Developing free software
PySide from Qt Project: http://qt-project.org/wiki/PySide
Re: [Trisquel-users] Developing free software
Great! :) And many good points in your huge post below. :)
Re: [Trisquel-users] On the NSA targeting readers of Linux Journal as extremists
If your a torrorist on the DHS watch list I might suggest some new clothing that has come out: For those in Europe (tighter fit, but profits are being donated to the Tor project): https://www.trycelery.com/shop/torrorist For those in North America (ie those who prefer an American style cut) I might suggest: http://www.zazzle.com.au/proud_to_be_a_torrorist_shirts-235061628145179516 The NSA thinks that every user of TOR is an extremist also and needs to be surveilled... I wanted to get a I made the DHS watch list, but this one is close: http://www.dontcomply.com/product/proud-member-of-the-terrorist-watch-list/
Re: [Trisquel-users] Developing free software
BTW I started coding for this set of things using Eclipse and its PyDev and Mercurial plugins a few years ago. Eclipse kept causing the JVM itself to SEGFAULT mid-debugging session and I kept losing work - so I switched to GNU/Emacs for my editor and turned on what it calls Version Control which creates a new numbered ~ (backup) file for each save. Then of course the various VCSes aren't entirely bug free and occasioanlly you have to fix a repo. So I switch to git because the repo control data is editable 'ASCII' with zlib defalate copies of the files which are much eaier to fix by hand.
Re: [Trisquel-users] On the NSA targeting readers of Linux Journal as extremists
Oh, like everybody else on them I waved at the Special Branch police officers with cameras on Pride marches back in the 80s. I was also active in student union politics in the same decade. Just about everybody who did that who is now a politician has discovered there is an MI5 file on them.
Re: [Trisquel-users] On the NSA targeting readers of Linux Journal as extremists
I'm very proud to be a GNU/Linux and Tor user. If the NSA believes that I'm an extremist, so be it. This just demonstrates that they are afraid of free and legal tools that may thwart (or at least slow) their illegal, unconstitutional practices as well as the free-thinking people that use them. Fascists' biggest fear is people that dare think for themselves.
Re: [Trisquel-users] Compile Trisquel from Source
OK, From What I Know / AFAICT you would create the same infrastructure layout as Trisquel but use the Trisquel repos as your upstream not the Ubuntu ones. Your package helpers would tailor specific packages to give you your distro's branding, desktop etc. Hack makeiso.git to build your own install disk using them. If you're going to run a .deb distro you will need to read package maint-guide. My guess is the main problem RMS will have been thinking of is the fact that ordinary distro repos are littered with packages which have GNU FSDG compliance issues. Using a GNU FSDG distro as upstream saves you most of that effort, although I think to retain GNU FSDG status yourself you would have to accept compliance bugs. Leny
Re: [Trisquel-users] Selene Media Encoder
I created a bug report. https://trisquel.info/en/issues/11954
Re: [Trisquel-users] Compile Trisquel from Source
However... The essence of the above is that all you're doing is creating some custom packages and building an install disk using them, the rest is stock Trisquel. Ruben has said Trisquel will be getting community a repos. So in principle you could create your custom packages and put them in the community repos. Build your own install disk with the community repos already enabled and have a Trisquel Remix. Then you wouldn't need your own infrastructure. Of course you'd have to ask Ruben about that. He's best contacted as quidam on #trisquel on freenode. Leny
