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[ This blog was crossposted on Software Freedom Conservancy's website. ]

I've had the pleasure and the privilege, for the last 20 years, to be either a volunteer or employee of the two most important organizations for the advance of software freedom and users' rights to copy, share, modify and redistribute software. In 1996, I began volunteering for the Free Software Foundation (FSF) and worked as its Executive Director from 2001–2005. I continued as a volunteer for the FSF since then, and now serve as a volunteer on FSF's Board of Directors. I was also one of the first volunteers for Software Freedom Conservancy when we founded it in 2006, and I was the primary person doing the work of the organization as a volunteer from 2006–2010. I've enjoyed having a day job as a Conservancy employee since 2011.

BOSTON GLOBE January 10, 2016 Clicking for Love The Curious, Odious, Hilarious World of Online Dating By Alfie Kohn [NOTE:  This is the complete version of an essay that was greatly abridged for publication in the Boston Globe‘s Sunday Magazine.] It was when the first woman I’d exchanged messages with invited me to give her a call that I suddenly ... Read More

I have probably spent more time dealing with the implications and real-world scenarios of copyleft in the embedded device space than anyone. I'm one of a very few people charged with the task of enforcing the GPL for Linux, and it's been well-known for a decade that GPL violations on Linux occur most often in embedded devices such as mobile hand-held computers (aka “phones”) and other such devices.

This experience has left me wondering if I should laugh or cry at the news coverage and pundit FUD that has quickly come forth from Google's decision to move from the Apache-licensed Java implementation to the JDK available from Oracle.

[ This post was crossposted on Conservancy's website. ]

I first met Ian Murdock gathered around a table at some bar, somewhere, after some conference in the late 1990s. Progeny Linux Systems' founding was soon to be announced, and Ian had invited a group from the Debian BoF along to hear about “something interesting”; the post-BoF meetup was actually a briefing on his plans for Progeny.

Many of the details (such as which conference and where on the planet it was), I've forgotten, but I've never forgotten Ian gathering us around, bending my ear to hear in the loud bar, and getting one of my first insider scoops on something big that was about to happen in Free Software. Ian was truly famous in my world; I felt like I'd won the jackpot of meeting a rock star.

Sky Arts have made a documentary, following Shane as he gets his new dental implants.  The documentary, entitled Shane MacGowan: A... Read more »

The post SHANE DOCUMENTARY SKY ARTS appeared first on Shane MacGowan.

If you've noticed my blog a little silent the past few weeks, I've been spending my blogging time in December writing blogs on Conservancy's site for Conservancy's 2015: Year in Review series.

So far, these are the ones that were posted:

• Karen Sandler Speaks about IRS Charity Issues
• Bradley M. Kuhn Speaks About Future of Copyleft
• Bradley and Karen Speak at FOSDEM 2015
• Conservancy Wins DMCA Exception for Smart TVs

December 18, 2015   What ‘No Child Left Behind’ Left Behind By Alfie Kohn The metamorphosis of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) from No Child Left Behind (NCLB) into the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) is being hailed as a historic triumph of bipartisan compromise (HTBC). Why, we haven’t seen such lopsided approval votes in Congress since . ... Read More

I have something to say that I'm sure everyone is going to consider controversial. I've been meaning to say it for some time, and I realize that it's going to get some annoyance from all sides of this debate. Conservancy may lose Supporters over this, even though this is my personal blog and my personal opinion, and views expressed here aren't necessarily Conservancy's views. I've actually been meaning to write this publicly for a year. I just have to say it now, because there's yet another event on this issue caused yet another a war of words in our community.

[ A version of this blog post was crossposted on Conservancy's blog. ]

I'm quite delighted with my career choice. As an undergraduate and even in graduate school, I still expected my career extend my earlier careers in the software industry: a mixture of software developer and sysadmin. I'd probably be a DevOps person now, had I stuck with that career path.

Instead, I picked the charity route: which (not financially, but work-satisfaction-wise) is like winning a lottery. There are very few charities related to software freedom, and frankly, if (like me) you believe in universal software freedom and reject proprietary software entirely, there are two charities for you: the Free Software Foundation, where I used to work, and Software Freedom Conservancy, where I work now.

October 31, 2015 All Aboard the LeaderShip Reflections on Goals and Catchphrases By Alfie Kohn If you’re going to lead a school or other organization, it might be smart to give some thought to what it means to be a good leader. But that fact doesn’t explain why some schools proudly announce that they train their students — every last ... Read More

Foreword to The Teacher You Want to Be 2015 To Change What We Do, Consider What We Believe By Alfie Kohn [This essay is adapted from the Foreword to The Teacher You Want to Be, edited by Matt Glover and Ellin Oliver Keene (Heinemann, 2015)] Creativity — in education and in general — might be defined as the capacity to ... Read More

October 4, 2015 The Back-to-School-Night Speech We’d Like to Hear* By Alfie Kohn This imagined presentation by a principal is also the first episode of the podcast Kohn’s Zone. You can listen to it here.   Is this working? [taps microphone]  I do believe it is! OK, if everyone can please find a seat, we’d like to get started. Thanks ... Read More

EDUCATION WEEK September 30, 2015 Do This and You’ll Get That A Bad Way to Defend Good Programs By Alfie Kohn When we’re not sure people will support our cause, it’s tempting to link it to something more popular. Because x may be controversial (or may simply lack broad support), we hitch a ride on y, an outcome that reflects ... Read More

[ A version of this blog post was crossposted on Conservancy's blog. ]

Would software-related scandals, such as Volkswagen's use of proprietary software to lie to emissions inspectors, cease if software freedom were universal? Likely so, as I wrote last week. In a world where regulations mandate distribution of source code for all the software in all devices, and where no one ever cheats on that rule, VW would need means other than software to hide their treachery.

The issue of software freedom is, not surprisingly, not mentioned in the mainstream coverage of Volkswagen's recent use of proprietary software to circumvent important regulations that exist for the public good. Given that Volkswagen is an upstream contributor to Linux, it's highly likely that Volkswagen vehicles have Linux in them.

Thus, we have a wonderful example of how much we sacrifice at the altar of “Linux adoption”. While I'm glad for some Free Software to appear in products rather than none, I also believe that, too often, our community happily accepts the idea that we should gratefully laud any company that includes even a tiny bit of Free Software in their product, and gives a little code back, even if most of what they do is proprietary software.

[ This post was cross-posted on Conservancy's blog. ]

In this post, I discuss one example of how a choice for software freedom can cause many strange problems that others will dismiss. My goal here is to explain in gory detail how proprietary software biases in the computing world continue to grow, notwithstanding Open Source ballyhoo.

SALON September 4, 2015 “Helicopter Parenting” Hysteria The Epidemic That Actually Isn’t By Alfie Kohn Parents who are overly involved in the lives of their college-age children are the folks we love to scorn. A steady stream of articles and blog posts bristle with indignation over dads who phone the dean about a trivial problem or moms who know more ... Read More

EDUCATIONAL LEADERSHIP September 2015   Who’s Asking? By Alfie Kohn It seems only fitting to explore the role of questions in education by asking questions about the process of doing so. I propose that we start with the customary way of framing this topic and then proceed to questions that are deeper and potentially more subversive of traditional schooling. 1. ... Read More

SALON August 16, 2015 The “Mindset” Mindset What We Miss By Focusing on Kids’ Attitudes The emphasis on effort in Dweck’s “growth mindset” is most notable for the larger questions it discourages us from asking. By Alfie Kohn One of the most popular ideas in education these days can be summarized in a single sentence — a fact that may ... Read More

Most of you by now have probably seen Conservancy's and FSF's statements regarding the today's update to Canonical, Ltd.'s Ubuntu IP Policy. I have a few personal comments, speaking only for myself, that I want to add that don't appear in the FSF's nor Conservancy's analysis. (I wrote nearly all of Conservancy's analysis and did some editing on FSF's analysis, but the statements here I add are my personal opinions and don't necessarily reflect the views of the FSF nor Conservancy, notwithstanding that I have affiliations with both orgs.)

July 11, 2015 Cheerful to a Fault “Positive” Practices with Negative Implications By Alfie Kohn We live in a smiley-face, keep-your-chin-up, look-on-the-bright-side culture. At the risk of being labeled a professional party pooper, I’d like to suggest that accentuating the positive isn’t always a wise course of action where children are concerned. I say that not because I’ve joined the ... Read More

I'm seeing plenty of people, including some non-profit organizations along with the usual punditocracy, opining on the USA Supreme Court's denial for a writ of certiorari in the Oracle v. Google copyright infringement case. And, it's not that I expect everyone in the world to read my blog, but I'm amazed that people who should know better haven't bothered to even read the lower Court's decision, which is de-facto upheld upon denial by the Supreme Court to hear the appeal.

I've been otherwise impressed with John Oliver and his ability on Last Week Tonight to find key issues that don't have enough attention and give reasonably good information about them in an entertaining way — I even lauded Oliver's discussion of non-profit organizational corruption last year. I suppose that's why I'm particularly sad (as I caught up last weekend on an old episode) to find that John Oliver basically fell for the large patent holders' pro-software-patent rhetoric on so-called “software patents”.

June 25, 2015 What’s the Real Purpose of Classroom Management? By Alfie Kohn   Everyone knows why classroom management skills are considered a critical part of teacher training. The reason we need to minimize “misbehavior” and get students to show up, sit down, and pay attention is so we can teach them stuff. That proposition is so obvious that it’s ... Read More

Apple announced last week that its Swift programming language — a currently fully proprietary software successor to Objective C — will probably be partially released under an OSI-approved license eventually. Apple explicitly stated though that such released software will not be copylefted. (Apple's pathological hatred of copyleft is reasonably well documented.) Apple's announcement remained completely silent on patents, and we should expect the chosen non-copyleft license will not contain a patent grant. (I've explained at great length in the past why software patents are a particularly dangerous threat to programming language infrastructure.)