Tizen or Teasin’?

I’m interested and will keep my eye on Tizen, but as of September 2011 I don’t see any published licensing information (other than Linux’s GPLv2). On good faith, I don’t think this will be an issue upon first release. However, is Tizen going to evolve as “open” like Android or pursue some street cred with those who value free software?

Even if a tease, I certainly applaud the idea of an API for “HTML5 and other web standards”. For various popular phone operating systems of the day, these “App Stores” are an ugly regression.

Jobs wants pay without paying it forward

Tim Lee:

Jobs had two stated reasons for the shift. He said Flash was a crash-prone resource hog and that it wasn’t an open standard. To a large extent, the first point is a consequence of the second. Because Flash is proprietary software developed by Adobe, third parties like Apple don’t have access to the source code or permission to change it. That means they can’t fix bugs or to optimize the code for particular devices. They have to rely on Adobe to do these things in a timely manner.

His Holiness Steve Jobs wants access and permission but doesn’t want his customers to have it. Despite the FUD, there isn’t a benefit beyond Apple’s bottom line in denying users this freedom. Communities are more than capable of protecting themselves from software vulnerabilities and can build stable systems; our track record speaks for itself. Jobs can’t claim otherwise, given that key parts of Apple’s software spring from software freedom.

so sue me

Religious belief is a personal matter. I cringe at those who don’t act from that fact.

OilRush for Ubuntu GNU/Linux

Canonical (for obvious reasons) continues to celebrate proprietary games made available to Ubuntu users through their Software Centre. I’m not entirely against proprietary games for GNU/Linux, though I won’t install/buy this title given its licensing structure. OilRush is based on the proprietary Unigine.

I think a better balance with free software would be to license the game’s engine freely and distribute/sell the data sets under non-free licenses. Though that would irk Free Culture supporters, they’re irked either way. A free software engine can be an incredibly useful contribution to computer science and other software that puts the engine to use.

Exceedingly restrictive licensing for GNU/Linux games however, appears to be an inevitable trend in the short-run. An optimistic view sees software companies planning their long-run under the assumption that freer software licensing will offer a competitive edge and maintain profitable opportunities. If this were to happen, it may prove the OilRush model isn’t sustainable.