Sinabro

I think I finally crossed an important threshold.

I can now finally firmly say “No” to people who ask for help with some proprietary software, such as Matlab, Mathematica, or any of the Adobe products.

I can now feign complete lack of knowledge of these products (which is at least half-true—it’s been so long since I’ve used any of those, that I’d have to do some research to “remember” it) and instead offer a free alternative (GNU Octave, Python + Numpy + Scipy, Maxima, Scribus, … ).

I can now prevent myself from empathizing with those who put themselves through hell trying to use a proprietary application. After all, when there are perfectly functional free alternatives around (with which I am more than willing to help), if they would still suffer through a proprietary application, now I can honestly tell myself that it’s their own fault.

I can only hope this isn’t just a phase.

QuestionCopyright.org:

There is one group of people not shocked by the record industry’s policy of suing randomly chosen file sharers: historians of copyright. They already know what everyone else is slowly finding out: that copyright was never about paying artists for their work, and that far from being designed to support creators, copyright was designed by and for distributors — that is, publishers, which today includes record companies….

To read the full article whose first few sentences are quoted above, click here. Otherwise, I encourage you to look around the site, and give this question a serious thought: “In today’s society, do we still need (if we ever did!) copyright?”

I took a long and hard look at my music collection. I nuked my old collection (some songs in there lasted for 5 years since my first acquaintance with Napster) about a month or two ago. I then started a new collection with music that I could get gratis legally. Like the Radiohead’s new album. Weird Al Yankovic’s “Don’t Download This Song”. And so on.

But … now that I look at my growing collection (Thanks, opsound), I realize these vestiges of my old self is weighing me down. These music might have been obtained at no cost. But they are not free. We are not free to redistribute them as we wish. We are not free to make derivative works out of it. These works are not free.

I’ve always said that “talent matters not where heart is black.” I do not think these artists really stand against us—after all, it’s only this belief that let me put this non-free music in my collection. But … these artists have not yet stood with us. And therefore, I shun them.

I can now proudly say that my music collection is completely free. All the music and mixes in here are composed of CC-BY-SA works to th best of my knowledge.

Now … if I can do something about my video collection …