Tag: freedom

£5/month for your digitial civil liberties

The Open Rights Group are a UK based organisation fighting for our civil liberties in the digital age. DRM, e-voting, copyright term extensions, FOI, net neutrality, privacy, RIPA, creative commons etc.etc.etc.etc.etc. They’re like an English EFF.

They have a tiny staff and many other volunteers who are extremely dedicated to the cause and are working very hard for our freedoms.  They are funded entirely by donations which pays for the staff, an office and expenses of running campaigns and pestering politicians.  They’re currently hoping to push their income up so things are more sustainable.

So, please sign up and give them some money every month. Anything from £5 upwards would be super. If you use computers for pretty much anything, it will make your life better – or at least prevent it getting any worse.

Open Rights Group: Two Years Old!

Open Rights Group logo The Open Rights Group (UK’s equivalent of the Electronic Frontier Foundation) is two years old today.  They fight for our digital civil rights (shoddy electronic voting schemes, software patents, all that kind of stuff) and are very good at it from what I’ve heard and seen.  Go read all about them and please consider supporting them, if you haven’t already.

Principles, Software and Freedom

Benjamin Mako Hill has written a great post over on his blog titled “Principles, Software and Freedom”. It’s something I’ve been trying to put into words for a while and he does it very well.

“Sure, everyone uses Firefox. Sure, everyone uses Apache and GNU/Linux for their web servers. Sure, everyone uses Drupal, Mambo, Plone, or another free CMS. But one can’t help but notice that Firefox, Apache, and free CMSs are higher quality, more featureful, and easier to use than the proprietary alternatives.”

“People arguing for free software from a principled position need to remember that principled positions are sometimes inconvenient. Free software is no exception. It’s frequently different, sometimes incompatible and a bit more work. In some situations (dare I say it?), it’s not as good as the proprietary alternatives.”

Free software isn’t always easy and isn’t always the best solution. Personally I believe freedom is important enough to weigh in heavily in the face of this.