new school

For those of you who don’t know, I will be attending the Illinois Institute of Technology next semester. Since orientation earlier this week, I have been bashing bugs in their system and proprietary licenses in general. My last email to them read something to the degree of ‘You won’t fix my bug report because you don’t want to, or don’t consider it a bug? Weak.’ Step two includes a planned invasion of the technology offices with Richard Stallman himself! (For those who read this and aren’t sure/to make this more clear: That was a joke. A very funny joke about RMS’ stance on free software). I’m excited to start a new school and learn stuff. I am so smart.

-Eddie Martinez

GAH GFDL

After reading the response Freddy (Admiral_Chicago) left on my post about (Free)dom, I was inclined to post about my preference for the CC, NC license that I use. Please note that this will be the last time I will speak publicly on the issue, or at least make it the main focus of my speaking.

My qualm with the GFDL is not that I like DRM or that I want to restrict anyone to read or see my work. Far from it. Thank you all you Chicago Ubuntu readers who have no choice but to put up with me on the planet. If you want to honor me, by all humble means, I would love for you to do so. My problem, as an author, is that I simply cannot let someone else edit my work. Par my understanding, anyone can modify the work as they see fit.

This is unacceptable in my opinion. I am working on a piece right now (beta) called ‘Chicago, winter nights. Typical night” with the following line:

Cold weather (holiday) lights
pinpoints
of life a the late nights, darkened by steel and photophobic concrete.

The point of focus ‘a the late nights’ is on the fence in my mind. I’m not even sure if this was intentional (that is draft #2 by the way), if it is a typo, if I mean to write ‘and the late nights…’ or ‘(ahhh!) the late nights…

To agonize over a sentence for a full hour, is a very trying mindframe. For someone to come along and change my work, and tell me that my sentence is wrong, is not my idea of freedom. What if I want to sell my work and have to jump through 50 loopholes to do so? Obviously it’s not impossible to do so, but that is a concern of mine. A big one regardless of the basis/legitimacy that it entails.

I’m not against derivative works either. If someone wants to change my story around and release it under the GFDL or CC that is fine. If you try to copyright it, we may have issues. I understand the point that Lawrence Lessig was trying to make in Free Culture about how copyrights and DRM are crippling society. I’m not trying to stop anyone, I just want my own contributions to be highlighted, because as I stated above, it is hard work. I will release a free version of any books I write, or of anything I publish. No DRM on anything I write, you will be allowed to distribute freely. To quote Ian Mackye, “I would rather have 100 people hear my songs then have 100 bucks in my pocket”.

I know Stallman is not after me, I know that it’s the best intentions going into the GFDL, yet I can’t support it, because it has too large a focus on the public domain and too small a focus on the author.

“You may not use technical measures to obstruct or control the reading or further copying of the copies you make or distribute.” No I won’t. But if I had wanted a co-author I would have sought their help. I didn’t, so please don’t edit my text. I’ll even release all my notes, drafts and rewrites of a piece, but I refuse to release my hard earned license to someone who has done nothing to deserve it. If someone wants to quote me, or make a derivative work in the GFDL, they can, but for my purposes, CC, NC is the way to go.

As always, thanks for reading. If anyone wants to read “Chicago, winter nights. Typical Night” I have two things to say. I have no idea why you would, since I don’t think I’m too hot an author, and let me know where I can contact you so I can send it to you. Hopefully, this is the last I hear about the issue.

-Eddie Martinez

CC, NC

Free(dom)

In a conversation about non free file formats (Can’t use PowerPoint to do my bio presentation. Sorry…. Can I use Open Office?) with one of my lab partners, she became understandably confused. I noticed a look of dispair rising exponentially as I talked; NFF, DRM, license types etc. can be a bit much at first glace, so I let it slide. Her interruption however, was a slap in the face: “I just don’t get what it’s all about..” Is that how we look as a community to the general population? Geeks rambling on about 2 lines of text in a license or 6 lines of code in a program that we hardly think twice about, until it crashes?

Obviously this is a gross exaggeration of the conversation, as we have moved past that a society in whole, and my arguement is based on an account of my life. 1) Overexaggeration, 2) Story. 2 logical fallicies in one sentence? Wow, if Red_Herring wasn’t already taken, I might consider that as a nick. Actually though, RJ posted a blog that got me thinking quite a bit. In particlar, one sentence stood out:

Well the big appeal to getting a fancy shmancy Mac is the looks and OSX.

Here, we see more of the underlying fundemental issues come into play. Most people, what they are looking for in a computer, is not a super stable, editable, free software. They are not looking for quality or angsting for a quick fix to a pesty bug. “M$ has a majority market share in the new desktop PC marketplace”, Bug #1. Well no, they dont own desktop PCs. They don’t dominate the OS market either. It’s much simpler and evil then that.