Free Republic

Open source projects are about more than lines of code; they’re fuled by passionate people creating lasting change.In June 1994, several of us had a pretty neat idea: Let’s create an Open Source version of the DOS operating system. On June 29, 2024, the FreeDOS Project will turn 30 years old.What is DOS, anyway?If you don’t know about FreeDOS, let me briefly set the clock back to the 1980s. When IBM sold its first IBM Personal Computer 5150 in 1981, they needed an operating system to run on it. IBM contracted with Microsoft, who in turn worked with Seattle Computing...

Hauling in a big fish here folks. Today, the audiobook release has been completed for Friedrich Hayek's intellectual essay The Use of Knowledge in Society, which can be downloaded here: https://librivox.org/the-use-of-knowledge-in-society-by-friedrich-hayek/I have a lot of goals I wish to accomplish, but seeing the completion of this Hayek book as well as the Mises book that should be done soon, brings our Librivox books into view of a much more diverse crowd of consumers and that has a lot of value. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Use_of_Knowledge_in_SocietyI am so happy and excited that this has been completed and is now available, I can't wait to go...

Diversity & Inclusivity The power of collaboration is greater when many different perspectives are included. Addressing Diversity and Inclusivity A diversity of ideas and contributions, one that originates from a diverse community, from all walks of life, cultures, countries, and skin colors—is vital for building sustainable and healthy open source communities. Individuals from diverse backgrounds inject new and innovative ideas to advance an inclusive and welcoming ecosystem for all. Linux Foundation is committed to building diverse and inclusive communities. Creating those diverse communities requires effort and commitment to creating inclusive and welcoming spaces. We continue to work to address this...

We’re teaching AI to understand and simulate the physical world in motion, with the goal of training models that help people solve problems that require real-world interaction. Introducing Sora, our text-to-video model. Sora can generate videos up to a minute long while maintaining visual quality and adherence to the user’s prompt. Today, Sora is becoming available to red teamers to assess critical areas for harms or risks. We are also granting access to a number of visual artists, designers, and filmmakers to gain feedback on how to advance the model to be most helpful for creative professionals. We’re sharing our...

Today, with great enthusiasm I can let everybody know that the audiobook recording for America's Retreat from Victory; The Story of George Catlett Marshall, by Senator Joseph McCarthy, (as of yesterday) has been completed! It is high quality, great care was put into its creation, and since this is a free and open source item I would encourage all to give this to as many people as you can think of. If you have X/Twitter, Facebook, email, snail mail, whatever you have. Make sure you give it to others. What astounds me is how quickly this was strong-armed to completion....

"If there was a free, public domain audio book written by Joseph McCarthy, would you be interested in listening to it?" Just as the question states. Senator Joseph McCarthy wrote several books, what if one or many of them were recorded as open source public domain audio books and given away for/to everybody? Would you be interested in listening and learning from them? Would you share it with others? I'm just curious what people say to this.

Interview Bruce Perens, one of the founders of the Open Source movement, is ready for what comes next: the Post-Open Source movement. "I've written papers about it, and I've tried to put together a prototype license," Perens explains in an interview with The Register. "Obviously, I need help from a lawyer. And then the next step is to go for grant money."Perens says there are several pressing problems that the open source community needs to address.I feel that IBM has gotten everything it wants from the open source developer community now, and we've received something of a middle finger from...

There are economic good times and economic bad times. When times get tough and money's tight, it's good to have Linux on your PC. 1. The OS and Apps Are Free 2. Your Current PC Will Run for Longer Running Linux means you can expect to use the computer for as long as you want. Rather than running into the artificial limitation of a company declaring your machine end of life and unsupported, you know you will receive free updates until your computer physically falls apart or becomes too underpowered to do what you need it to do. This makes...

The audiobook for the 1916 book The History of the Fabian Society is now complete. Full disclosure - this isn't my voice. Yes! those of you who know, I've been recording free open source public domain audiobooks for years now in order to bring content to a conservative audience who realizes the natural advantage that history brings for us. So why not leverage it? Why let an advantage go to waste? To that end, I had a conversation with a gentleman some time ago, we discussed potential works, and long story short he put in the work and produced this...

Get over it: Microsoft is a Linux and open source company these days 'The Evil Empire' hasn't been evil for about eight years now Opinion In the beginning, Microsoft was The Evil Empire.In 2001 then CEO Steve Ballmer declared: "Linux is a cancer." Later, Microsoft sponsored SCO's copyright attack on Linux; claimed that Linux violated unnamed Microsoft patents; and forced Linux-based Android vendors to pay for dubious patent claims. Bill Gates and Ballmer's Microsoft wanted to see Linux and open-source software (OSS) dead and buried.They did it because, as Microsoft's Halloween documents show, they believed "OSS poses a direct, short-term...

If Elon Musk is indeed able to buy Twitter, the platform could look a lot different. In his first public, non-tweeted comments since the saga began, Musk addressed why he wants to buy the company, and changes he would want to bring about. “Twitter has become kind of the de-facto town square,” he said. “It's just really important that people have both the reality and the perception that they're able to speak freely within the bounds of the law.” In terms of specific changes, Musk said Twitter should open-source its algorithms and minimize the interventions it takes in policing content....

Last week, the director of the United Nation's World Food Programme said if the world's top billionaires just donated a fraction of their worth, millions of people who are at risk of starving to death can be saved. Elon Musk, the second wealthiest person in the world, said he'd give up some of his wealth – only if he knows exactly where the money is going. Musk, the founder of Tesla and SpaceX who has an estimated net worth of $151 billion, according to Forbes, replied to a tweet questioning the group's figures. "If WFP can describe on this Twitter...

In 1864, Robert Dale Owen (A congressman from Indiana) published the book "The Wrong of Slavery, the Right of Emancipation, and the Future of the African Race in the United States", which traces the beginning of slavery from its roots in the British Empire(with in-depth statistics) up through the colonies and the days just prior to the Civil War. The audio can be downloaded from here.(text here) This audio is free and open source in the public domain. I have a lot to say about this book, and I want to warn everybody that this book is not what it...

As Facebook and Twitter and other big tech firms continue to cement their positions on the side of progressivism, Google, Microsoft, Apple and many other companies, I just wanted to point out to others who may see this that I think that free open source audiobooks now more than ever offer a great way for any conservative to express themselves. In particular, its a way to create something high profile that can't possibly be silenced by big tech. This is in fact censorship proof. I'll tell you right now, The Founding Fathers do speak for me. John Jay, James Madison,...

Open source RF hardware has been under development for several years, a boon for ham radio operators and academics. Open Research Institute anticipates that the Commerce Department will find that these technologies are unrestricted under the carve-out for open source in the EAR.

Tell-all with president Brad Smith reveals Obama warned tech giants that a privacy reckoning was coming Microsoft president Brad Smith (pictured) has admitted that the Windows giant was "on the wrong side of history" when it came to open source.While nowadays the born-again company seems unable to resist the embrace (if that's the right word) of the open-source world, it was not always so.Former CEO Steve Ballmer memorably declared that "Linux is a cancer" back in the day. Goodness, how times have changed in Redmond."Microsoft," said Smith during a chat hosted by MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab (CSAIL),...

Thanks to the coronavirus pandemic, we are woefully short of ventilators that can give the most gravely ill a chance for life. There are many efforts afoot to build more ventilators. Now, instead of building ventilators, a group of open-source developers has a new idea: Create a firmware update, Airbreak, which can transform common Constant Positive Airway Pressure (CPAP) machines into non-invasive ventilators.  Their first effort -- a proof of concept -- converts the Airsense 10 CPAP machine, which is a common, inexpensive sleep apnea treatment device, into a ventilator. It does so by simply replacing its existing firmware with updated firmware. With this...

Microsoft has been betting big on open source for past few years. Apart from open sourcing a few things here and there, Microsoft is contributing a lot to Linux kernel (for its Azure cloud platform). To further strengthen its position in the open source world, Microsoft acquired the popular open source code hosting platform GitHub for $7.5 billion. Now Microsoft owned GitHub has acquired npm ( short for Node Package Manager). npm is the world’s largest software registry with more than 1.3 million packages that have 75 billion downloads a month. ...snip... Good Hunting... from Varmint Al

The Free Software Foundation really set the bar high there Good news everybody! The Free Software Foundation has blown through its self-imposed target of 7,777 signatories in its efforts to persuade Microsoft to make Windows 7 open source.We noted last week the GNU-gang's attempt to coax the born-again open-sourcerer formerly known as "The Beast Of Redmond" into making a surprise deposit into GitHub.The thinking was that since Windows 7 has now come to the end of the road, as far as free security updates are concerned, then perhaps Microsoft might release it as open software?We put it to the Free...

By Yi Whan-woo, Kim Yoo-chul As nuclear negotiations between North Korea and the United States remain in a stalemate after no "substantial outcome" from their recent encounter in Sweden, the lack of visible progress in the denuclearization dialogue is raising concerns that the North is "buying time" for its military and nuclear advancement. During an Asan Institute for Policy Studies security forum held in Seoul, Tuesday, Bruce Bennett, a senior defense analyst at the Washington-based RAND Corporation, claimed that despite North Korean leader Kim Jong-un's promise to end his nuclear program, Pyongyang has not taken any meaningful measures toward this....