Free software day is today

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AS SchNEWS GETS ROUND TO WIPING THE WINDOWS...

"To try to own knowledge, to try to control whether people are allowed to use it, or to try to stop other people from sharing it, is sabotage." - Richard Stallman, founder of the Free Software Movement.

Smash EDO Mass March
Saturday 16th Sept march against EDO's complicity in War Crimes in Lebanon, Palestine, Iraq and Afghanistan. Meet at 12 noon at The Level
For more see www.smashedo.org.uk

This Saturday is International Software Freedom Day, so SchNEWS is donning cyberpunk mirror shades and jacking into the world of pony-tailed sandal-wearing geek warriors battling to keep information free from the grip of ruthless corporate monopolies, and creating an alternative world of free software based around Linux...

We are living in an age where fewer corporations own larger and larger chunks of the media - from Rupert Murdoch owning vast swathes of print, film and TV media, to others like Clear Channel, the Bush-funder whose stake in the US media includes a large slice of radio stations, concert venues, 39 TV stations, half a million billboards and more - and they'd like to do the same in the UK (See SchNEWS 541). Fortunately the internet has become a good outlet for independent media, albeit without the mega publicity budgets.

The world of computers is dominated by one belligerent monster - Microsoft (M$) - who have steamrollered their way on to 93% of the world's PCs, and are worth an amount equal to the gross domestic product of Spain. They have built their empire using a combination of stamping on, or buying-out, competitors and making sure their patented technologies become defacto standards, pocketing billions from worldwide license fees. And they didn't get where they are today without political persuasion - in the form of big donations to both major US parties, as well as creating front lobby groups to influence policy - even setting up bogus grassroots groups and paying off newspaper columnists.
Bill Gates eyes up the profits
Click here for the bigger picture

And in case you think Bill Gates, M$ CEO, might be giving some of it back with his $26 billion Foundation - consider this: while he's tossing $100m into health initiatives in Africa over the next ten years, in the past three years M$ has spent $421m trying to eradicate its emerging rival, Linux. $200,000 was used to set up the 'Grand Challenges in Global Health' initiative in Africa - its agenda exposed by the presence on the panel of Dr Florence Wambugu, a bio-tech expert from Monsanto. Being pro-GM, Gates spent $25m on a research programme into bio-tech for African agriculture. During his 2002 trip to India, Gates dropped a generous $100m for AIDS research - yet spent $400m on training people in government and education in using M$ products, and putting M$ Windows into Indian schools...

However M$ don't always get their way and in April last year they lost a European Commission anti-trust ruling which said they had abused their dominance for commercial gain. It ordered them to release technical information so that third-party software could work properly on Windows servers, and hit them with $586m in fines. More recently the new version of Windows - Vista - is delayed because the EU Competition Commission are saying it can't be sold in the EU as it breaks more anti-trust rules.
Free For All

But despite or because of all that, a software revolution has begun to bypass the monopolies. A whole new way of creating and distributing intellectual property and media, and protecting it from commerical exploitation, has emerged. The concept which underpins this is 'copyleft'. Put simply, if your work is copyleft, you still own it, but others can use it, distribute it, modify and improve it, and whatever results stays copyleft - kept in the public domain. Copyleft was first created as the legal back-bone of the Free Software Movement by founder Richard Stallman in 1984, who showed that it's better to let others use a program for free and allow them to contribute to it, and then make the improved version available to all as a commonly shared resource.

The participatory, anarchic and decentralised copyleft way of working has already given rise to several important success stories outside its initial use - such as the free online encyclopaedia Wikipedia. It now has four million entries, all written and edited by readers who make changes which appear instantly on the site. A recent study found that Wikipedia is at least as accurate as any commercial encyclopaedia, while also much larger (and still rapidly expanding). Another example is Indymedia, the global independent news network which is also built on the postings of text, photos and video from readers using a system called 'open publishing'.

But how do they stop it all turning into a clearing house for nutty ranters? Wikipedia safeguards its content from sabotage by keeping all previous versions of an article, which can be restored, and has panels of experts monitoring and adjudicating in conflicts of opinion. Indymedia sites use editorial collectives to monitor postings and promote 'feature' articles. The free/open-source software movement also uses this way of working - smaller groups feeding into larger projects, which are refined by a myriad of extra contributors - to build up the operating system and key programs it needs to take on the mega software companies.
"When I'm clonin' Windows"
Click here for the bigger picture
March Of The Penguins

"Under NO circumstances lose against Linux" said the 2003 email circulated to M$ senior execs by the head of worldwide sales, who also talked of a special fund to offer bribe-like discounts or even free software to government bodies thinking about switching to Linux.

But despite M$'s intimidation tactics and sweeteners, many organisations and individuals worldwide are switching over. Being free helps, but it's not just a matter of cost - it's also about security. Not only are Linux and Mac un-plagued by the viruses of the Windows world, but like Coca-Cola, M$ keeps its software recipe secret and away from scrutiny. So it's no accident that countries like Brazil, Russia, India and China are now going Linux when the US company holds the keys to unknown hidden back doors into Windows with which they can do who knows what.

Despite M$ putting $750 million into promoting itself in China, that country is clearly moving towards Linux. In India, it is to become the standard in universities, as well as in several states including Madhya Pradesh, and schools across India, Chile, Brazil, China and the EU are changing over as well. As it stands M$ is running a virtual extortion racket, taking money for nothing from every school, hospital and organisation across the world to pay for licenses to run the computers they depend on - but with a free alternative why should they? In Brazil, President Lula has publicly shunned M$, with plans to switch the nation's IT infrastructure away from it - meaning $120m a year less going into Gates's coffers. Linux could soon be on a third of Brazil's computers, with other Latin American countries set to follow.
Live and Let Linux

What is Linux then? It is an 'operating system' - like Windows or Mac - which comes with its own set of key applications, eg web browser, word processor etc. Many of these 'open source' programs are also available for Windows or Mac, and in fact are considered as good as, if not better than, M$ products - eg Firefox and Open Office, which replace Internet Explorer and Office respectively. If you mostly use a computer for web surfing, writing, watching films and burning CDs, then you could safely turn your computer over to Linux.

One of the best things about Linux, apart from sticking two fingers up to another nasty corporation, and being virus and spyware free, is that you're downloading the software you want but don't have to muck around with cracks because it's all totally legal for a change. However as the programs are often being written by small teams with limited resources, some of the software is not as slick as the corporate products: Glitches can appear - but the whole process relies on people using these progs and reporting bugs and suggestions back to the development teams, so they can make it all more luddite-proof. So while Linux is not yet ready to compete as a high end multimedia platform - though it is improving rapidly - proof of its reliability is that over 70% of the internet is run using the 'open source' file server programme called 'Apache', mostly on Linux.

If you want to see Linux in action but don't want to delete Windows quite yet, it comes free for download and burning to CD, which when booted runs a working version of Linux and it's major applications. Or, you can make your PC 'dual boot' - that is both Windows and Linux are installed, giving you the choice at start-up. Even if you're stuck with Windows or Mac you could ditch M$ Office and Internet Explorer and use Open Office and Firefox.

As SchNEWS's moves our raggle-taggle bunch of skip-bin PCs away from the 'dark side', this edition is being done using free open-source software running on Linux. The articles were written in Open Office, the issue layout done in Scribus, and website updated with NVU. Linux is a bit like Soya milk - it tastes funny at first but you soon prefer it and you know it's good for you.

* Which Linux? Because anyone can legally make and release their own 'distro' of Linux, many do: ranging from hacker communities to slick corporate versions (for more see http://distrowatch.com). SchNEWS recommends Ubuntu - free to download at www.ubuntu.com, which you burn to make a 'live CD', or if you don't have broadband we will post Ubuntu CDs free to the first 20 people who email in requests.

* For an introduction to Linux, and how to change over to it, see www.schnews.org.uk/diyguide/howtolinux.htm

* September 16th is International Software Freedom Day with events in over 100 countries. In London there will be a march from Regents Park at 12pm to Westminster University where there will be a range of talks, information sharing and free Ubuntu CDs to distribute. For more info see http://gllug.org.uk

Other links
Ubuntu help - http://ubuntuforums.org
Kubuntu help - http://kubuntuforums.com
Richard Stallman - The Free Software Movement's guru www.stallman.org
General Linux info www.linux.org
Linux Forums - www.linuxforums.org