disinformation | open source software

Welcome to Disinformation | July 06, 2003

Abuse Your Illusions - the follow-up to Everything You Know Is Wrong & You Are Being Lied To is in the store and every bit as essential. The long-awaited Disinformation DVD is in too!
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U.S. Weighs Military Intervention in Liberia
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What The European Papers Say
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Violence Mars Nigerian Strikes
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Religion in the News: June 2003
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open source software
by Open Source Mavericks (nick@rsub.net) - May 21, 2001

Long before proprietary software became dominant, the Open Source model was the sole method of computer applications development.

The principle behind Open Source is simple: the more people that have access to the source code to a given piece of software, the more robust and stable it will become.

With the the introduction of proprietary software in the mid 1960s, the user has become more distanced from the actual software they are trying to use. The Open Source idea is a collaborative one, that enables bugs to be tracked and fixed without having to involve a gigantic multi-million-dollar corporation that is unable to repair the software they themselves manufactured.

A subclass of Open Source software, the Free Software movement contends that not only should the source code to software be available but also that the user should always be able to run a program, study how it works, adapt it to what he needs, redistribute copies so he can help his neighbor and also have the freedom to improve the program and release it to the public for the benefit of the whole community.

We've built most of disinformation with Free Software. It is far faster and more stable than our old, proprietary version of the site.

Unable to restart windows and unable to contact a human being about it? Build your own operating system for free by using the following web-sites as resources!

Disinformation Technology Page
This page describes the technology we used to build disinformation, along with links to the individual product pages themselves. Check it out!

Slashdot.org
Slashdot.org: The quintessential "News for nerds, stuff that matters" site - always full of good news on technology, science, and individual rights. Good Polls too!

Salon Open Source Coverage
Salon jumps on the bandwagon with a good collection of articles and commentary on the movement.

Apache
Apache is an Open Source server program that is used by thousands of websites around the world. Their site is described as follows: "The 'Apache Software Foundation' exists to provide organizational, legal, and financial support for the Apache open-source software projects."

GPL License
The General Public License (GPL), as laid out on the Samba site. Good reading and an important piece to fully understanding the importance of the General Public License/Free Software/Open Software movements.

Samba.org
Samba is an Open Source software suite that provide file and print services to a number of networks. The software is available under General Public License (GPL).

Perl.org
The Perl Homepage which is maintained by a group of volunteers is used to support the Perl programming language, which is Open Source. A must visit for aspiring geeks who don't want to learn Java!

Opensource.org
For twenty years it has been building momentum in the technical cultures that built the Internet and the World Wide Web. Now it's breaking out into the commercial world, and that's changing all the rules! Are you ready?

Free Software Foundation
The home of the'Free Software Foundation (FSF) and the GNU Project (What is GNU? GNU's not Unix!). The 'Free Software Foundation' is the one that actually protects your rights: they go overboard sometimes, but they're right!

Richard M. Stallman
A biographical data-file of the man behind the Free Software movement, Richard M. Stallman.

Value Your Freedom
This NetSlaves interview (March 27, 2000) is an interview with Richard Stallman, who founded the GNU Project in 1984, and helped organize the Free Software Foundation. Stallman talks about his experiences creating Linux, Boycotting Amazon, and Hacker subcultures. RealAudio. 21 minutes.

Copyleft
Copyleft is the Free Software Foundation answer to copyright. It takes current copyright laws and turns them on their head by preventing any one person from ever owning the source code: it forces everyone to own it!

No Recession for Free Software
This Salon column (May 18, 2001), by Andrew Leonard, interviews several Open/Free Software people who contend that a recession will spur the movement's growth.

Disinformation Dossier on Boycott Amazon?
Check out the Disinformation dossier on Boycott Amazon?

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