Finding the gems under piles of hype

Free Software and Lisp

Sampo — Sun, 01 Jan 2006 00:11:28 +0000

Sometimes I have been pondering what is so great about Free Software. There’s *something* irreplacable that makes it so special to me and many others. Still it’s far from easy to put finger on what the something is, let alone explain it to someone else. At the moment it feels like only some people are curious enough to get into the free software and feel the presence of this something, others live in a different world and aren’t touched by it.

Now I’m beginning to feel the situation is somewhat similar in the Common Lisp world. Likewise, it contains something that makes it special. It’s not easily explainable and only a few people are so attracted by it they overcome the initial challenges of learning Lisp.

I need to think and write more about this.

Minor enlightenment

Sampo — Sat, 31 Dec 2005 23:21:59 +0000

Now I understand better why Linux should be called GNU/Linux. This didn’t require hours of fasting and meditation, only quite a common finding: Nexenta. still it made me realize what has been and is so great about linux, it’s not the Linux, kernel, but the freedom of software. Nexenta project uses the kernel of OpenSolaris, runs gnome and stuff, uses packages of Ubuntu. It’s young but already pretty functional “distro”, it looks exactly like one would think linux looks, but there is no linux in it.

What makes this project group able to achieve so much in relatively short time frame? It’s the huge amount of work on Free Software. It enables people to make new ideas happen not having to start from the beginning every time. Many people think Free Software people are zealots, some think free (no payment required) software is good enough, some think it’s good enough to be open source (with more restrictive licenses) but no, it’s only Free (libre) Software that makes great things like this possible. No, I haven’t tried Nexenta, I just enjoy seeing some kind of evolution and availability of other choices, it makes us, people, free.

Happy new year!

Sampo — Sat, 31 Dec 2005 23:05:54 +0000

Oh well, I’m just excercising, but the year did change anyway so let’s hope this year is at least as good as the previous.

Hello, world!

Sampo — Sat, 31 Dec 2005 14:19:04 +0000

I finally succumbed and did it, started a blog. Time will show if anything valuable will appear here.