The importance of license in libre works

One of the most important parts of free software movement is license. Choosing a license is one of the constant concerns of the free software and free culture community. As you know, a work is considered libre only if it’s published under a free (as in freedom) license.

One of the problems is that it happens a lot that a developer forgets to distribute his work under a proper license. Well it can be solved easily by reminding the community the importance of providing a license but the bigger problem is the license itself.

Most of the times, developer distribute their works with weak licenses or licenses that are not fully compatible with free (as in freedom) culture.

As far as I know, the most popular software license is Expat (MIT), as of 2020. MIT is a great simple libre license. However, it’s weak and not copyleft. I personally license my works under the latest version of GNU General Public License (GPL) but some people may don’t like it as they may find it unpleasing.

Anyway, what I’m talking about is the importance of license as the license specifies the terms of the software. Whether it can be used for progress of technology or helping the people or be used to please corporations, it’s all can be defined by the license.

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Encryption is worthless unless we control the keys

A lot of companies advertise their encryption of data. Encryption is a good practice for privacy and security but it’s worthless sometimes. For example, WhatsApp encrypts messages but it’s worthless as it’s Facebook (WhatsApp’s owner) who creates and manages the keys.

What a secure messenger or any service should do is to let the user create and handle encryption keys. Let me give you another example. Imagine you want to send a letter to a friend and I’m the mail person. You give me your letter and I promise you to hide it. Now, I may hide it from other people but I still have access to it.

Encryption is like that. If you want to hide your letter, you should do it yourself and not trust anyone. As long as other services do the encryption for you or manage your keys, you’re not truly secure and that encryption is worthless.

My opinions will change, and it’s good

Lately, I see many people argue with each other about how people had different opinions in the past and now they have changed. Some people think that because some people had different opinions in the past, they do not have the right to comment on current issues or on the subjects they have changed their ideas about.

This is wrong. People change and that’s a good thing. In fact, if our ideas don’t change then we should check them. It wasn’t long ago that some racist people protested against a black child going to an all-white school. If one of those people comes to a Black Lives Matter protest and fights for black people, should we stop it?

Of course not. People change their opinions. It’s the beauty of an independent person and mind. Of course I believe people should be punished for wrongs they did but that doesn’t mean goods they do are worthless.

A lot of people around the world are under the influence of propaganda and false/fake news. Many still think borders, sexuality, race, skin color, etc. can separate us. It’s not people’s fault as it’s the governments/regimes that do this. What we should fight is propaganda itself. Governments have benefits in separating people and that’s exactly what we should fight.

If they kill us they won’t have any power over us. What they are afraid of is our belief and independence of thoughts. They separate us because they know if we share this independent thoughts, they won’t survive. They separate us because they know together we’re stronger.

Sweden will criminalize underage marriage even abroad

In a week, Sweden will criminalize underage marriage even if marriages have taken place outside of Swedish borders. This is a great thing happening for Swedish people and world. Most underage marriages are forced by parents.

Even if underage marriage is not forced by parents, it’s still child abuse. Sadly, some countries don’t recognize such marriage as child abuse and they allow it.

Legal age for marriage is 18 in most countries. However I, personally, think it should be 21. Marrying a person when you’re young is not wrong but may have terrible impacts. Now imagine what terrible impact it has when you’re underage.

Expectation vs. Reality

People should be aware if they’re seeing an advertisement

A lot of people are tired of advertisements. For example, some of us are using ad blockers now when we’re surfing the web. A lot of people mute the TV when they see an ad, others may use different technics to avoid ads. But what we’re facing now, is advertisements that are not specifically tell us what they are.

If you see a billboard in a street recommending something, you can tell it’s an ad, but what if your favorite football player recommends something? Imagine Leo Messi posting a picture of himself drinking Pepsi. How would you know if it’s really his preference or it’s just a paid ad?

Such thing can affect our decision on choosing stuff.

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Most free programs are not alternatives

It’s a reply to “Wanna try Jitsi Meet?” by Paulo Pinto.

I believe referring to a free software as an alternative to a proprietary software is not right. Most free software are not created to replace something. They have been created to satisfy a need for a service or software and are licensed free (as in freedom) to respect users’ rights.

I wouldn’t refer to a software as an alternative to another software, unless the creators specifically mention it.

Alan Turing birthday

June 23 is Alan Turing’s birthday. He was a mathematician, computer scientist, logician, cryptanalyst, philosopher, and theoretical biologist.

Turing was highly influential in the development of theoretical computer science, providing a formalization of the concepts of algorithm and computation with the Turing machine, which can be considered a model of a general-purpose computer.

Turing is widely considered to be the father of theoretical computer science and artificial intelligence. Despite these accomplishments, his accomplishments and true potential was never fully recognized in his home country during his lifetime due to his sexual orientation. Also because much of his work was hidden from public by the Official Secrets Act.

During the Second World War, Turing worked for the Government Code and Cypher School (GC & CS) at Bletchley Park, Britain’s code breaking center that produced Ultra intelligence. For a time he led Hut 8, the section that was responsible for German naval cryptanalysis.

He devised a number of techniques for speeding the breaking of German ciphers, including improvements to the pre-war Polish bombe method, an electromechanical machine that could find settings for the Enigma machine.

A true legend and a wonderful person. May you rest in peace, father of our computers.

Browsing in private mode

There’s a lot of reports that some web sites are blocking users’ access if they are on private browsing mode. One of these web sites is The Washington Post, who chose “Democracy Dies in Darkness” as its motto. It’s very funny that the very news agency that claims to fight for democracy and freedom is tracking its users and collects their personal information.

If you visit The Washington Post web site with private mode activated on your browser, you’ll see such notice:

We noticed you’re browsing in private mode.

Private browsing is permitted exclusively for our subscribers. Turn off private browsing to keep reading this story, or subscribe to use this feature, plus get unlimited digital access.

I do support asking for subscription or limiting the amount of articles a user can read on free plan but limiting people from using private mode is not acceptable. The point of private browsing is to not being recognized nor  followed.

This is actually much more worrying that this is a bug from browsers. A browser should not let websites know if a user is browsing web in private mode. Not being tracked should not be a luxury. A user should be in private browsing mode by default and if they wanted, they can turn it off.

Tracking people in private mode should be considered as a violation of people’s privacy and browsers should be forced to put more effort to make private browsing much more safer and easier for users.