EFF Wants Apple To Defend Its Developers.

Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is weighing in on Lodsys’s patent threat against iOS Developers. EFF wants Apple to defend its Developers.

Lodsys claims that Apple is licensed to use Lodsys’ patents, even though there’s no detailed explanation of the licensing. At this moment Apple is keeping the silence. Lodsys’ threat against iOS Developers will ultimately hurt iOS App ecosystem if Apple chose to do nothing. Developers can opt to forgo in-app purchasing and upgrades; effectively taking one revenue-generating feature for Developers and Apple.

Apple, it’s your turn!

Know Your Rights: Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA)

Know your rights.

What is ACTA?
It stands for Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement.
Read more about ACTA on Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and decide if you should care about it.

Why You Should Care About It
ACTA has several features that raise significant potential concerns for consumers’ privacy and civil liberties, for innovation and the free flow of information on the Internet, legitimate commerce, and for developing countries’ ability to choose policy options that best suit their domestic priorities and level of economic development.

Petition to President Obama, regarding transparency of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement
http://www.keionline.org/acta-petition

FSF: Microsoft’s Windows 7 Deadly Sins

No! It is not FFS. It’s FSF. It stands for Free Software Foundation.

It’s “Free” as in Liberty, noat as in free beer.

As much as I believe that there are a lot of Hippies out there involved in the Free Software Foundation, I still wonder why I’m making this very statement.

Let’s get to the main story. As I read an RSS item from Slashdot (lots of Hippies are frequenting this site), one really caught my short attention span. Well because it is on the top of the RSS feed and the only unread items at that moment. I was previously offended by the troll-behavior of Microsoft P.R. team (Paul Thurrott, Ed Bott and  Mary Jo Foley with the addition of Randall C. Kennedy) as described by Tom Reetsman. By the way, Reetsman (via The Small Wave) just posted his take on Thurrott’s rants against anything that is not Microsoft; specifically Apple. Well, at least Thurrott has one loyal supporter (an accomplice *cough*) defending everything Thurrot said and attacking the non-Microsoft company (namely Apple in this article).

Oh where was I? I told you my attention span was short.

Free Software Foundation, Inc. has created a site titled “Windows 7 Sins – The case against Microsoft and proprietary software.”
http://windows7sins.org/

Don’t worry Apple haters, they mentioned “proprietary software.” Apple does make proprietary software, therefore guilty by association. I bet that Thurrott is trying hard to make himself look neutral by attacking other companies that make “proprietary softwares.” We all know that Thurrott lives off Microsoft’s business model.

I prefer to slack than copying and pasting the arguments brought up by FSF. I get the message, but I do not blindly agree to every single point they make. I do take advantage of many things the Open Source Community have to offer in the past and present. I am pretty sure that it will be a similar situation in the future. I do also believe that propriety was born out of necessity. I don’t mind proprietary software as long as we have other alternatives. I’m pretty sure that  Google has some kind of proprietary software. I still use Google as my main search engine; Microsoft can Bing themselves.

OK, I opted not to slack as much by echoing FSF’s argument points:

  1. Poisoning education
  2. Invading privacy
  3. Monopoly behavior
  4. Lock-in
  5. Abusing standards
  6. Enforcing Digital Restrictions Management (DRM)
  7. Threatening user security

If you feel compelled to say that there are other companies also guilty of the sins, then feel free to tell FSF about it.

To loosely quote MacBreak Weekly panel, Apple and Steve Jobs would be worse than Microsoft if they had the monopoly.

Well, I definitely need to get some sleep, no wonder this turns into a rant.

P.S. EFF – I just feel like saying it at this moment.