Top all-time · #4153
Freedom Lawyers of America
Personal blog · gondwanaland.com/mlogpoliticsculture
Freedom Lawyers of America is a personal blog at gondwanaland.com about politics and culture. Since 2009, 19 different Hacker News readers have linked it 39 times, most often “The Choice of a GNU Generation an Interview with Linus Torvalds (1993)”. The last post was in 2007, but the archive is still widely read.
Too few sampled comments (11) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN commenters mostly cite the site's 1993 Linus Torvalds interview on 386BSD and early Linux history. Other linked posts cover Wikipedia advertising and a public-domain video idea. No comment judges the writing itself.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 11 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Most-linked posts?
- The Choice of a GNU Generation an Interview with Linus Torvalds (1993)6 people · 7 mentions · first linked 2020-03-11
- A "kill hollyweb" plan2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2013-05-03
- Upgrade to CC02 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2013-11-26
What Hacker News says?
Putting adverts on the website, apparently. Some projects just fiercely want to stay noncommercial, so they will object at this. I am reminded of a comment from the time when Wikipedia was trying to figure out how to cover their costs: The bigger danger isn't advertisers manipulating content, but that people will no longer see Wikipedia as theirs, they will see it as yet another place that corporations bombard them…
Comment linking /mlog/2007/01/02/wikipedia-advertising/
on “Welcome to Libera Chat”Submitted Snowdrift as a story · 10 points
HN discussion“Actually, I have never even checked 386BSD out; when I started on Linux it wast available (although Bill Jolitz series on it in Dr. Dobbs Journal had started and were interesting), and when 386BSD finally came out, Linux was already in a state where it was so usable that I never really thought about switching. If 386BSD had been available when I started on Linux, Linux would probably never had happened.“ Linus Torv…
Comment linking /meta/history/interview.html
on “iOS 15 Humane”Submitted Wikidata II as a story · 8 points
HN discussion> CC0 is deprecated by CC themselves As far as I can tell this is simply false. At https://creativecommons.org/retiredlicenses/ there is a list of "retired" (deprecated) legal tools, which does include a "Public Domain Dedication and Certification" but in the right column says "Replaced by two separate tools: the CC0 Public Domain Dedication and the Public Domain Mark." Furthermore, at the top of the page it says "C…
Comment linking /mlog/2013/11/25/upgrade-to-0/
on “New GitHub Terms of Service require removing many open-source works”Submitted 6 reasons for GPL lovers/haters/exploiters to enjoy and support GPL enforcement as a story · 5 points
HN discussionI almost completely agree with CyberShadow, though the problem with fragmentation isn't only caused by forks...my rant on this http://gondwanaland.com/mlog/2013/10/22/open-source-prolifer... But fragmentation is going to happen and occasionally something really better comes along that wouldn't have from improving existing things. So I'm just as interested in making 'natural selection' work better. Now, it's extremel…
Comment linking /mlog/2013/10/22/open-source-proliferation-problem/
on “Fossdroid.com: Free and open source Android applications”Submitted Future of Copyright as a story · 4 points
HN discussion> I'm wondering if it had a detrimental effect on adoption of *BSD, and thus increased Linux popularity at this early and critical time. Linus has said as much[1]: "If 386BSD had been available when I started on Linux, Linux would probably never had happened." [1]: https://gondwanaland.com/meta/history/interview.html
Comment linking /meta/history/interview.html
on “Playing around with the Fuchsia operating system”Submitted The Choice of a GNU Generation an Interview with Linus Torvalds (1993) as a story · 2 points
HN discussionBSD was around, popular, and much more mature than the Linux ecosystem in that early 90s, but was dogged by the BSDi lawsuit. (In fact, SunOS was derived from BSD for most of the 80s, through 1992 or so, when they jumped to AT&T/USL Unix — likely as a result of the lawsuit.) This is arguably the raison d'être of Linux as well[1]: > If 386BSD had been available when I started on Linux, Linux would probably never had…
Comment linking /meta/history/interview.html
on “Open Source Initiative bans co-founder, Eric S Raymond”Submitted 6 reasons for GPL lovers, haters to enjoy and support GPL enforcement as a story · 2 points
HN discussion> And use what, though? Pirate Bay? I know of no place to legally purchase DRM free content that you would find on Netflix. It's a sorry state to be in. > Maybe launch a startup that has only public-domain videos to start? See: http://gondwanaland.com/mlog/2013/05/03/a-kill-hollyweb-plan... Feel free to take the idea and run with it. > There has to be a good solution. I think you or I or someone else needs to make t…
Comment linking /mlog/2013/05/03/a-kill-hollyweb-plan/
on “I Still Don't Want To Be Part of Your Fucking Ecosystem”Submitted Upgrade to CC0 as a story · 2 points
HN discussionLinux could easily have never existed. At the time Linus got started in 1991, *BSD was tied up in a legal dispute (which was not resolved until 1994), and Minix was only available under a restrictive license (Minix was relicensed BSD in 2000) If either of those legal issues had not existed in 1991, Linus probably would never have started Linux [0], and Linux's place in history would have been assumed by something el…
Comment linking /meta/history/interview.html
on “The Linux kernel has surpassed one million git commits”Submitted Realize Document Freedom Day as a story · 2 points
HN discussion"Apartheid was concerned with the area people lived in the same country (in this area it might be seen as unjust - since people had citizenship to the country." I use the term Apartheid advisedly. I do not regard place of birth a legitimate discriminator any more than I do race. As for the "poorest of the poor", they live in poor countries. Again, I do not see the relatively poor of wealthy countries as being more w…
Comment linking /mlog/2007/08/06/apartheid-trends/
on “Obama Announces $2B Fund for Startups”Submitted Open Source Semiconductor Core Licensing → GPL hardware? as a story · 2 points
HN discussionI agree, even wrote a quaint blog post on that long ago https://gondwanaland.com/mlog/2006/08/07/aolternative-histor... ... but partiallypro seemed to be claiming the close to the opposite, that open source caused centralization. I'd still love to read a justification for that claim!
Comment linking /mlog/2006/08/07/aolternative-history/
on “Open Source Is Winning, and Now It's Time for People to Win Too”Submitted DRM and the Churches of Universal Access to All Knowledge's strategic plans as a story · 2 points
HN discussionThere's some perspective of Torvalds on 386BSD in this 1993 interview: https://gondwanaland.com/meta/history/interview.html Applicable part: "when I started on Linux it [386BSD] wast available (although Bill Jolitz series on it in Dr. Dobbs Journal had started and were interesting), and when 386BSD finally came out, Linux was already in a state where it was so usable that I never really thought about switching. If 3…
Comment linking /meta/history/interview.html
on “Bill Jolitz has died”Submitted Defensive Patent License 1.1 withdiff as a story · 1 points
HN discussionOr if you were a government. If in the long term bitcoin-like cryptocurrency is to play a significant role in society as money (not totally implausible, in the long term), I don't see why any entity with a more or less captive audience of payers (eg taxpayers) wouldn't start its own, taking a large cut ... http://gondwanaland.com/mlog/2011/05/30/cryptocurrency-cambr...
Comment linking /mlog/2011/05/30/cryptocurrency-cambrian/
on “Bitcoin”Submitted Shaver: Copyright and Inequality as a story · 1 points
HN discussionWe don't live in the plucky, upstart 1991 anymore. "If 386BSD had been available when I started on Linux, Linux would probably never had happened." ( http://gondwanaland.com/meta/history/interview.html ). We live in today, a world that has several open-source OSes available, with users who are used to seeing projects on the internet.
Comment linking /meta/history/interview.html
on “The Sortix Operating System”Submitted Technology and wealth Inequality Promotion as a story · 1 points
HN discussionAgreed! Not about Tesla, but noting the constitutional angle -- http://gondwanaland.com/mlog/2013/10/14/negative-sum-us-stat... -- I have not searched much but would love to know if anyone serious has arrived at this conclusion.
Comment linking /mlog/2013/10/14/negative-sum-us-state-competition/
on “Nevada strikes $1.25B tax break deal with Tesla”Submitted [Semi]Commons Coordinations & Copyright Choices 4.0 as a story · 1 points
HN discussionThank you for initiating the merger. I admired that because I agree fragmentation is a big problem -- http://gondwanaland.com/mlog/2013/10/22/open-source-prolifer... -- and the Linux desktop is a prime example. Clearly more mergers are needed.
Comment linking /mlog/2013/10/22/open-source-proliferation-problem/
on “LXQt 0.11 Released”Submitted Defensive Patent License 1.0 birthday as a story · 1 points
HN discussion
