ddavid123

Personal information

Description

My name is Michael Lenox, and I live in the state of Texas in the U.S. I have been using GNU/Linux as my only OS since November 2005. Was a believer in "Open Source" and held their principles in high esteem. I was told that "Open Source" and "Free Software" has the same goals and mission, to give us lots of reliable, stable, secure, cool software!

Wasn't until about 2009 when I began to understand that "Open Source" and "Free Software" had radically different views and purposes! I came to realize that "Open Source" is about how having the source code "open" or free to public scrutiny gives the developer a technical advantage. "By having the source code available, bugs can and do get fixed faster". While that may or may not be true, it is just a superficial reason to have the code "Open".

Free Software, as I discovered, is a moral, social, and ethical issue far more important that a technical advantage. Without the freedom to control our computing by means of Free Software, or non proprietary software, we are enslaved to the developers through the use of their software! Without Free Software, we have no control of our computing, because we are denied the right to change the software for our own purposes.

So, after having this epiphany, I realized that my GNU/Linux distro includes patented technology in the form of patented multimedia codecs, flash player, and worst of all, binary "blobs" in the Linux kernel! These "Blobs" are apparently binary firmware that intermediates between the kernel and the driver, or the driver and the hardware itself. It is my opinion that the sudden boom of supported hardware is the result of the kernel developers adding these "blobs"!

Thank you Richard Stallman and Free Software Movement as well as Trisquel and all the Free Software distros. Without you, we would all be slaves to the proprietary software empire. Let freedom reign!

History

Member for

12 years 49 weeks