I would like to clarify quotes in two recent CBC articles by Peter Nowak: Copyright bill may spark battle over who owns what and Apple iPad hits Canada amid controversy.

In each it is suggested that I believe that the iPad should be illegal. What I said should be illegal is the application of non-owner locks to technology. I am not concerned with Apples technology, only radical changes to the law that legalize and/or legally protect a form of theft.

FLOSS offers many benefits over software that has a sole proprietor and is funded by royalties. Examples of sole proprietor software are packages such as Microsoft Office where there is a single entity which either owns or is relicensing the exclusive rights on the software, and thus is the sole entity which can provide many levels of software support.

While I recommend against this, it is possible to use FLOSS and yet receive none of the benefits beyond lower ($0) royalty payments. Government departments seem to do this all the time, not wanting to accept the advantages of FLOSS (misinterpreting software acquisition policy? Ideologically predisposed to sole proprietor software? Offer your thoughts in the comments...).

The two most common ways to avoid the benefits of FLOSS can be summarized by two acronyms: COTS and DIY.

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(from Distrowatch.com)

Ben Zhao has announced the release of CDlinux 0.9.1, a minimalist live CD with Xfce and support for several languages: "CDlinux 0.9.1 was released today. This is a yet another big leap towards CDlinux 1.0, integrating many new features and enhancements, including: a new GUI installation and upgrade wizard; rewrite the 'persistent mode' code and save persistent data as Squashfs; replace Fcitx with SCIM to support input method for more locales; add full support for German, French, Japanese and Russian; add support for 'Safe Graphics Mode' in case native X.Org driver fails; determine better whether to run in RAM or loop mode; some fine-tuning to improve performance on machines with low memory; many package upgrades, including Linux kernel 2.6.28.4, Firefox 3.0.6, Ghostscript 8.64, GIMP 2.6.4, JRE 6u12, Wine 1.1.14." Read the release announcement and release notes for more details. Download the "Community" or the "Standard" edition from here: CDlinux_CE-0.9.1.iso (203MB, MD5), CDlinux-0.9.1.iso.gz (68.5MB, MD5).

CBC news reporter Emily Chung interviewed a number of people in the community on the Canadian Government RFI on what they called "No Charge Licensed Software (NCLS)".

I am new to linux and am wishing to link up with ANY OTHER LINUX USER! I am quick to learn, I just need someone to show me the ropes. I live in St.Catharines, Ont, so if anyone knows anybody, please send me a msg, or email me at willhornby@yahoo.ca .

The Free Software Foundation (FSF) is a donor supported charity founded in 1985 and based in Boston, MA, USA. The FSF has a worldwide mission to promote computer user freedom and to defend the rights of all free software users. They have sister organizations in Europe, India and Latin America.

Since any inclusion of legal protection for "technological measures" in the law regulates what software citizens are allowed to run on their own computer, they have an interest in this issue. Canadians who are part of the Free Software Community really need to get involved in this election to ensure that the rights of Canadian Free Software users are protected. Richard Stallman, founder and president of the FSF, requested that I write this article to give our community some ideas of what to do.

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Congrats to Montreal-based Evan Prodromou who seems to have enlisted #3 Twitterholic Leo Laporte in Evan's attempt to open up Twitter with Identi.ca. To learn more about Evan's awesome project, check out FLOSS Weekly 37: Laconica. See also: Army.TWiT.tv.

FACIL sent out press release (english press release, which includes a link to a translation of their court filing) that documents their launching of a case in Quebec Superior Court. The case is intended to end a loophole being used by the Quebec provincial government to award contracts to proprietary software suppliers without an adequate evaluation of all the options, including Free/Libre and Open Source Software options.

I was interviewed by Peter Nowak for CBC News last evening about the case. Even though I hadn't read the documents from FACIL yet, guessed which loophole they were trying to close.

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My longtime colleague Brian Osborn, publisher of Linux Magazine (which is what it's callled everywhere in the world except for the US and Canada where it's "Linux Pro Magazine") has been calling special attention to a recent article they've published, regarding the use of open source software to circumvent China's Internet censorship mechanisms. The article describes the mechaisms, as well as the software used to get around it all. Interesting reading, especially timely considering the Olympics.