The FSF’s concerns go beyond whether AI platforms need kill switches. They extend to who controls them—and whether users will have any say.
Posts published in “Opinion”
From cat lasers to AI-powered pacifiers, Consumer IoT promises genius but mostly delivers nonsense. Here’s why the so-called “smart” tech trend is spectacularly off the rails.
From bulletproof backpacks to banning file downloads: why our fight against 3D-printed guns keeps missing the point—and what policy leaders should really be asking.
The Mustang Mach-E recall isn’t just a glitch—it’s a sign that sometimes, the best solutions are the ones we’ve left behind.
"OK, that was clickbait, a distro like that would be great," our man in Italy answered when we asked about the headline. "Point is, it may be irrelevant, unless…"
While working at home instead of behind a desk in a crowded office building is new to many tech workers, it's business as usual for most of us working in the FOSS world.
When it comes to Linux and systemd, the one thing on which everyone can agree is that it's complicated -- some say overly complicated.
Although the Linux Foundation seems to represent Linux and the entire Linux user community, many community members have complained for years that the organization has defaulted to representing only the interests of its corporate membership.
Although the consensus seems to be that it was time for the founder of the GNU project and the Free Software movement to step down, we shouldn't forget his many contributions aimed at keeping tech free.
We’re reasonably certain this wasn’t written by the hand of any god. Then again, we haven’t personally met any gods, so how would we know? All we know for sure is that as some good book almost said, “The truth shall make you chuckle.”
Roblimo’s Hideaway
“REPENT!”
It’s easy to imagine Richard M. Stallman yelling “Repent, ye software sinners!” as he stands on a mountaintop, wearing flowing robes and raising a hand-carved wooden staff toward the sky — with lightning and thunderheads swirling around him, of course. Meanwhile, the Israelites — I mean computer users — cower in the valley below, worried that The Lord shall smite them for the sin of using proprietary software.
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Robin “Roblimo” Miller is a freelance writer and former editor-in-chief at Open Source Technology Group, the company that owned SourceForge, freshmeat, Linux.com, NewsForge, ThinkGeek and Slashdot, and until recently served as a video editor at Slashdot. Now he’s mostly retired, but still works part-time as an editorial consultant for Grid Dynamics, and (obviously) writes for FOSS Force.