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Did some cleaning up.

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This commit is contained in:
Niels G. W. Serup
2015-02-14 16:38:01 +01:00
parent 62d7162c7d
commit f93ac48919
7 changed files with 31 additions and 150 deletions
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2
site/about/index.org
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@@ -89,3 +89,5 @@ depending on external JavaScript which depends on non-XHTML, like the FSF
widget on the propaganda page, might cease to work).
[[./links][Propaganda]]
Should I go to HTML 5? I don't really care.

3
site/about/niels.org
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@@ -19,7 +19,7 @@ Niels goes by the nicknames "ngws" and "nqpz" (and a few others).
** Contact
Niels can be contacted at [[mailto:ngws@metanohi.name][ngws@metanohi.name]]. You can also find him as ngws
in #hongabar on irc.freenode.net.
in #hongabar and #diku on irc.freenode.net.
** Things used by Niels
@@ -128,6 +128,7 @@ Most of these I don't use. Some might be dead.
+ [[https://savannah.gnu.org/users/nqpz][GNU Savannah]]
+ [[http://uncyclopedia.wikia.com/wiki/User:Schabeindividuum][Uncyclopedia]] (don't take this one seriously)
+ [[https://github.com/nqpz][GitHub]] (I don't like GitHub that much, but I use it sometimes)
+ [[https://twitter.com/ngwwws][Twitter]] (not really using it)
** Keys

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site/writings/freeculture.org
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@@ -8,13 +8,11 @@ Free culture is about sharing and mixing creative works, often under
[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyleft][copyleft]]. It encompasses pictures, video, audio, text and similar types of
works.
It is good.
It is good, although not necessarily easy to produce.
** External links
+ [[http://freedomdefined.org/Definition][Definition of Free Cultural Works]]
+ [[http://freeculture.org/][freeculture.org]]
+ The [[http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/][Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike license]] --- a widely used
copyleft license approved for free cultural works. Wikipedia uses this
license. This website uses it as well in many places.
+ [[http://creativecommons.org/][Creative Commons]]

8
site/writings/freesoftware.org
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@@ -67,10 +67,10 @@ programmers who do not use software that allows sharing and modification tend
to do.
Fourth, if a program cannot be studied, and if that program contains code for
reading from and writing to files in special formats --- e.g. the Microsoft
Word format --- people are forced to use that program if they have a file in
such a format (yes, OpenOffice.org and LibreOffice have good support for such
non-free formats, but not full support).
reading from and writing to files in special formats --- e.g. the Microsoft Word
format --- people are forced to use that program if they have a file in such a
format (yes, LibreOffice has good support for such non-free formats, but not
full support).
Fifth, if a program cannot be studied, you cannot be certain of its
intentions. Since you do not know what the program does (in details), you do

49
site/writings/hacking.org
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@@ -1,49 +1,10 @@
#+title: Hacking
#+summary: A simple description of what hacking is really about
#&summary
Hackety hack.
#&
#+startup: showall
#+license: wtfpl
* Hacking
He's a *hacker*! Oh no, the pirate's going to *hack* our computer! And our mobile
phones! And our TV! Run for your lives! He'll use our credit cards to *hack*
even more! He might even *hack* our fridge!
That's not a hacker. That's an evil person. Hackers are not evil. Hackers are
curious people. The evil person described above can be called a /cracker/
instead. Such a person can be said to /crack/ computers and mobile phones, not
hack them. Hacking is very different.
*Hacking* is the act of creating new ways to use objects with well-defined
uses. It's about experimenting, being clever, and playing. Hacking does not
have to result in something useful, though it sometimes does in the long
run. It's about the present.
When you've hacked something, you've created a *hack*. It can happen
spontaneously, or it can happen because you want it to happen.
Once, I was eating a pizza in a restaurant with a group of friends when one of
my friends couldn't eat anymore of his hummus. I had one slice of pizza back,
and he had a little hummus back. I realized then that I could /combine/ the
pizza and the hummus, and tada: I ate a hummus pizza slice (which was good, by
the way); i created a hack.
Much more clever hacks have been created, but the hummus pizza example should
serve as a simple example of what a real-life hack /could/ be --- a hack can be
so many things.
Hacking is often associated with software development, because that's often
about finding clever solutions and being open for new ways to do things.
** "Just stop it already. You've lost."
One could argue that the hacking community should just accept that the media
and the non-hacker part of the public have long ago changed the meaning of
hacker to "person who breaks digital security", and that hackers should just
find another word to describe themselves. But if we did that, all the history
associated with hacking would fade as new generations came along.
** External links
+ [[http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/H/hacker.html][The Jargon File: hacker]]
+ [[http://stallman.org/articles/on-hacking.html][stallman.org: On Hacking]]
I use the term "hacking" to mean "playing with".

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site/writings/licensing.org
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@@ -5,8 +5,6 @@ What's up with all that stuff?
#+startup: showall
#+license: wtfpl
Previous opinion: <@eval macros.titlelink('/writings/non-copylefted')@>.
* Licensing on metanohi
I usually just use the Do What The Fuck You Want To Public License, Version 2
@@ -45,7 +43,21 @@ I guess that some people consider e.g. CC BY-SA a recognizable symbol and that
its law stuff is secondary. I can follow that thought, but I just got tired of
it.
Some might not want to integrate WTFPL code into their project, but fuck them.
Some might not want to integrate WTFPL code into their project, but fuck them
(okay, in practice I'll probably just relicense to BSD2 or BSD3 if necessary).
All that being said, I will work in any free software and free culture project
no matter what license they use. WTFPL is just for my junk.
no matter what license they use. WTFPL is just for my own junk.
* Copyright in general
I'm not a fan of copyright as it is right now, but I don't know if it should be
removed alltogether (if that was even possible...). I think it would be nice if
copyright was only for commercial use.
* Previously
I used to have a lot of text about this, but I've come to just not care. It's
all on git if you want to read it.

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site/writings/non-copylefted.org
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@@ -1,93 +0,0 @@
#+title: My works, non-copylefted
#&summary
Why I don't use copyleft for my own works.
#&
#+startup: showall
#+license: wtfpl
#&+classes=warning
This old opinion is somewhat verbose and, well, old. See <@eval
macros.titlelink('/writings/licensing')@> for my current opinion. Why do I
keep changing opinions? Ugh...
#&
* My works, non-copylefted
A few months ago, I went from using the GPL for most of my software to BSD3;
read about it [[/writings/software-licenses][here]]. I chose to continue to use Creative Commons
Attribution-ShareAlike for most of my non-software works.
Now, I have chosen to stop copylefting my original works entirely.
I do this not because of a change in my general view of copyleft, but because I
don't see myself ever using the legal benefits of copyleft; I can still
understand why someone would choose to use copyleft to challenge copyright,
fighting fire with fire, but it's just not something I would do.
The power of copyright lies in whether people accept the terms that an author
puts forth, and that, if the copyright is abused, the author uses the law to
punish the abusers. The same is essentially true for copyleft. So, if I
release a work under e.g. Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike, and someone
derives a new work from that and does not copyleft that, I have the power to
make them change that decision; I could contact them and try to convince them to
be nice and free their work; I could contact them and say they *must* free the
work because of the law; and I could even /sue/ them for not freeing their work!
Until now I have, without really realizing it, used copyleft licenses only for
the signal they send: If you create something new from something I have made
free, please make your work free as well. I never thought about what would
happen and what I would do if someone broke the law and didn't follow my
copyleft. I probably should have thought about that at the beginning, but hey,
I just wanted to make my works freely available and modifiable and hope that
others would do the same!
While I don't think it is wrong to use even lawsuits for upholding copyleft,
it's not something I would /ever/ do. If someone takes a copylefted work and
abuses it, the community does not lose works; it simply does not gain them.
Arguing against this argument would be the same as asserting that Hollywood
loses money when people do not pay for digital, made-at-no-cost copies of their
films -- a view I certainly don't agree with.
Of course, I might never have to enter a lawsuit to uphold copyleft. Maybe just
asking the abuser would be enough in all cases. But since this very page is
public, the abuser would realize that I don't intend to sue in any case, so they
might just ignore my request. And I don't intend to manipulate people into
making them think I would sue them.
It's not my impression that there has been a lot of court cases involving
copyleft; most of the license violations seem to be handled without the need for
lawsuits, though I guess both lawyers and the threat of lawsuits are still quite
used. The FSF's [[https://www.fsf.org/licensing/compliance][Compliance Lab]] gives a good impression of the potential
difficulty of fixing license violations. I don't mind this compliance fixing,
but in principle I am a bit against spending time making evil people relicense
works when time could be spent making good people create new, free works. In
the long run, this will surely result in more good, free works, though forcing
someone evil to relicence might be practical in the short run.
In essence: Copyright is so hopelessly broken, and personally I'm not going to
fight copyright with itself. This is because I'm not going to depend its and
copyleft's legal benefits, and that is because I would only depend on something
broken if I found it /very/ necessary and not just useful in the short run. I
just want to share my works freely, and if someone who uses my works don't want
to do that, I'll simply ignore them. My walking away from copyleft makes my
works usable by more people.
#&img;url=/img/licenses/wtfpl.png,float=right
So, from now on I'll use the [[http://www.wtfpl.net/][Do What The Fuck You Want To Public License (WTFPL)]]
for all my original works, software and culture alike. I don't think that the
"fuck" in the license is a problem. I also thought about using Creative Commons
Zero, but even though [[http://wiki.creativecommons.org/CC0_FAQ][it can be used for software]], [[http://opensource.org/licenses/index.html][OSI has not approved it]]
because of [[http://projects.opensource.org/pipermail/license-review/2012-February/thread.html][a patent clause]] ([[https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html#CC0][FSF has approved it]], and it's also DFSG-free), so it
might be unpractical. WTFPL has been approved by the FSF. [[http://opensource.org/minutes20090304][OSI rejected it]], but
that's because they didn't consider it a license and not because they disagreed
with any of the (1) clauses in the WTFPL, so I don't think using the WTFPL will
pose any practical problems. I'll still contribute to copyleft works, though I
might mention this URL.
I was a bit inspired by [[http://blog.ninapaley.com/2013/01/18/ahimsa-sita-sings-the-blues-now-cc-0-public-domain/][Nina Paley's change to CC 0 from CC BY-SA]]. I think her
story is scary.
My first copylefted program to be un-copylefted is the generator for this
website which used to be under the AGPL. I'll relicense the rest of my works on
a need-to-basis (there are so many, and I have other stuff to do).