1.evaluatedlinks.org (7198B)
1 * papers (26/09/24) 2 ** RMS's papers [https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/fsfs/rms-essays.pdf] [2002, updated 2004] 3 - this paper is actually a list of many papers, the ones of note however can be found on page 4 17 (the GNU project), 44 (the defintion of free software), 57 (why free software is better than 5 open source), 91 (what is copy left), 121 (why software should be free) 6 - an individual writup on these papers can be found bellow 7 - the GNU manifesto can also be found here but will be covered individually 8 - these have all been fact checked and by countless individuals, the entire thing was edited by 9 lawrence lessig (Prof of Law, Stranford law school) 10 *** The GNU project [1999] 11 - a brief history of GNU 12 - started in the MIT AI lab in 1971 13 - the MIT AI lab broke down in the early 80's 14 - the AI lab had gotten a new system (PDP-10), which had made much of the previous work 15 unusable 16 - the new system was full of non-free software that was different to what they were used to 17 - these new systems made the idea of sharing software forbiden, which was completly different 18 from how it had been before 19 - many of the engineers from the AI lab where put into a new company called symbolics 20 - RMS continued the workd of the AI lab when he started GNU in 1984 21 22 *** The definition of free-software [1996] 23 - free software must follow 4 key values to be free 24 - [x] the freedom to run a program for any use case 25 - [x] the freedom to study how a program works and to addapt it to your needs 26 - [x] the freedom to redistribute the program 27 - [x] the freedom to edit and rerelease the program 28 - for software to stay free, these freedoms must be irevokable 29 - free software doesn't mean non-comercial, but the two often go hand in hand 30 *** Why free software is better than opensource [1998] 31 - this paper claims that opensource's goal is all about convients and ease of use, not 32 the ethical arguments that the free software movment pushes for 33 - the two movements are very closely linked 34 - the free software movement does not want to be linked with the opensource movement as the 35 core values are different 36 - the opensource movement is more permisive, not needing software to stay open and other such 37 things, this means that opensource lisences do not meet the criteria for free software 38 (see above for specific definiton) 39 - just because the movements are different doesn't mean that a specific member of one disagrees 40 with the other 41 - in the modern age the two are used interchanably, as most open source software is licensed 42 under the GPL which means it is also free software 43 44 *** What is Copyleft [1996] 45 - in its simple form, it just means releasing software as public domain, much like what happens 46 to copyright content after 70 years, execpt it skips the 70 year wait. this method works 47 however it has the error, this software can be redistributed as non-free software by a 48 company who need the functionality 49 - to make something copyleft, it needs to marked as copyright then have distribution terms 50 added to it, this can make it so it is in the public domain in the legal sense 51 - the rest of this document goes over much the same as the previous ones, discussing at how 52 the versions of the GPL are copyleft 53 - the main thing of copyleft is that it is a counter to copyright, it is designed to be anti- 54 ownership, and easy to add too and share 55 56 *** why software should be free [1992] 57 - proproses a counter argument to the idea that software is made to maximise profits, that 58 software should be made to better the public and the users 59 - proproses that the 'current system' would be best going and moving to putting the users first 60 - it talks about how non free software is a time and money investment for nothing; its harder 61 to work with, its more work to add to, it puts you at someone elses mercy 62 - a non-free program has lots of reasons not to use it 63 64 ** The GNU maifesto [1984] 65 - the question why do people want to help (P40) makes an intresting point that programmers are 66 unhappy with the corprate world entering their hobby, it states that programmers were 67 irritated by the direction software was moving towards 68 - the question why all computer users will benifit (P42) also makes an intresting point that 69 free software will mean that computers are not just functional, but state of the art and 70 always moving forward (personal note, they did, the gnu+linux system is very robust, cant be 71 beat) 72 ** The free software alternative [2014] 73 - written by someone who has benifted from free software, this case in the library space. 74 - it shows how even in some of the early days of personal computers, free software/freeware was 75 filling in many blanks that MS-dos could not provide, in this case an ascii table 76 - talks about switching to to freeware programs saved money and time (up to 88%!) (P2) 77 - the paper does cover more however not much is of any relancy to the topic 78 use this paper to show the speed imporvements in spaces other than software space, showing how 79 its versitile, use at the end of paper 80 81 ** The role of open source in the energy sector [2023] 82 - this discusses the importance of free software in our ever reliant society specifically 83 in the energy sector 84 - it discusses how FOSS software provides a higher level of stability (P1) 85 - it discusses how FOSS software has a lower rnd cost (P1) 86 use this paper to show the cost imporvements in spaces other than software space, showing how 87 its versitile, use at the end of paper 88 89 ** Collaborative, Code-Proximal Dynamic Software Visualization within Code Editors 90 - this paper talks about a peice of software made for VS code that helped visulize code 91 - it is licensed with apache 2.0 92 - page 8 shows how there tool of visulising code has made it easier for deveopers to work, with 93 up to 75% agreeing with this point 94 use this paper to show how developers like to work with open source software, that it is own the 95 bleeding edge, and that it is doing things others aren't, also talk about how it was built 96 for the open source VS code 97 98 * things 99 ** editors 100 lots of code editors are FOSS and developers will swear by their editor 101 *** vscode 102 - is an open source editor used by 73% of devs according to 103 [https://survey.stackoverflow.co/2024/technology#1-integrated-development-environment] 104 105 *** vim 106 - also an open source editor used by 21% of devs according to 107 [https://survey.stackoverflow.co/2024/technology#1-integrated-development-environment] 108 - joke about how this paper was written with vim 109 110 ** OS 111 - linux distros make up a large chunk of devs according to the stackoverflow survey 112 [https://survey.stackoverflow.co/2024/technology#1-integrated-development-environment] 113 114 ** tools 115 this is for everything else 116 *** Latex 117 used to make documentation, papers and so many other documents, has many open source 118 implemetations, what this paper is written in. 119