Morality and Legality of Open Source Code Forking

Free Software (or Open Source Software) aims not only to give the freedom to use software without restrictions, but also grants the user the freedom to modify, enhance and redistribute the modified code to others while simultaneously granting others the same freedom as well.

To this end, commercial companies have benefited from contributions made by online communities from all over the world on Free and Open Source Software, which some of the company gives back.

However there are also some quarters who are not prepared to face the reality of code forking, especially when the fork has the potential to compete with the original software.

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RadioPlay – an online radio streaming Player that runs on Linux system tray

RadioPlay is an only radio streaming player that runs on compatible Linux Desktop system tray. It feature an easy to use interface and only targets online streaming radio listener. The application sits on the system tray and features a simple interface which allows the user to quickly select Radio station based on its genre.

RadioTray supports customized playlist in the popular PLS (shoutcast/icecast) format, M3U as well as ASX, WAX and WVX.

Radio Tray

tray

Radiotray is available from the Ubuntu and Debian repository and can be installed using the Ubuntu Software Center, Synaptic or by running command “sudo apt-get install radiotray

9 GNU/Linux distributions endorsed by the Free Software Foundation

These are the 9 GNU/Linux distribution which are endorsed by Free Software Foundation as it meet the Guidelines for Free System Distribution as outlined by FSF.

The Free Software Foundation also provides a brief explanation behind the reason why some popular GNU/Linux distributions are not included in the lists, which is available here: Explaining Why We Don’t Endorse Other Systems

Debian published Community Patent Distribution Policy FAQ to address software patent risks

Last month, Debian has released the Community Patent Distribution Policy FAQ to educate Free Software developers and distributors regarding patent risks towards Free Software. The FAQ explains the terms associated with software patent such as infringement, liability, contributory infringement, willful infringement, injuction and how to minimize the risks.

debian open logo

For more information – please read the full documentation of Community Patent Distribution Policy FAQ from Debian website

How to save (or mirror) an entire website with httrack in Debian and Ubuntu

Httrack is a tool for copying and saving an entire website in Debian and Ubuntu. Httrack can crawl an online website save each of the pages (including graphic and other downloadable files).

Among httrack features are:

  • Able to continue interrupted downloads
  • Selective download
  • Customizable user-agent
  • Customizable Scan-rules, can exclude files from being crawled
  • Accept cookies
  • URL hacks
  • Tolerant requests support
httrack screenshot

Using ‘httrack‘ is easy, as it has built-in wizard that can guide you through the process of mirroring web sites. The user will be asked a series of question about the URL to be mirrored, the location where the files will be saved, proxy server and the user-agent to be used.

p/s: httrack perhaps is the only open-source website copier/downloader tool available for GNU/Linux operating system. It is efficient and easy to use. The only gripe that I’ve when using ‘httrack‘ is that it does not provide progress feedback (unlike its counterpart in Microsoft Windows) like ‘wget

How to add contrib and non-free repository in Debian GNU/Linux

Debian GNU/Linux is probably the only Linux distro that has the largest software repository. However the default installation for Debian only includes the ‘main’ repository which is directly maintained by the Debian community and fulfills the Debian Free Software Guidelines (DFSG).

The two other repositories ‘contrib’ and ‘non-free’ are not enabled by default as it contains software that either does not meet DFSG requirements or depends on library or packages which does not meet DFSG requiments.

How to enable contrib and non-free repo in Debian
As ‘root’ you need to edit /etc/apt/sources.lst

Then add ‘contrib’ and ‘non free’ at the end of each line that begins with “deb” and “deb-src” just like the example:


deb http://http.us.debian.org/debian jessie main contrib non-free

deb http://security.debian.org jessie/updates main contrib non-free

Save the file, and run ‘apt-get update‘ and optionally ‘apt-get upgrade‘ to activate the changes.

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