More good news – The Samba project have adopted GPLv3 as the license for future releases of Samba. This move strengthens the position of the project and will protect the freedoms it offers for many years to come.
I’m never sure how much Samba I use – I don’t talk to Windows boxes, but then I do occasionally talk to odd printers, and Macintoshes and Samba probably ‘just works’ under there, somewhere. I met Jeremy Allison at LinuxWorld London last year and it was great to meet someone so passionate about free software and freedom, over and above ‘open source’

Oh my word.
Music industry attacks Sunday newspaper’s free Prince CD
The eagerly awaited new album by Prince is being launched as a free CD with a national Sunday newspaper in a move that has drawn widespread criticism from music retailers.
The Mail on Sunday revealed yesterday that the 10-track Planet Earth CD will be available with an “imminent” edition, making it the first place in the world to get the album. Planet Earth will go on sale on July 24.

“It’s all about giving music for the masses and he believes in spreading the music he produces to as many people as possible,” said Mail on Sunday managing director Stephen Miron. “This is the biggest innovation in newspaper promotions in recent times.”

Well, I don’t think putting a CD in the newspaper is an innovation. Newspapers have given away gratis DVDs for ages now. What’s the difference here?

One music store executive described the plan as “madness” while others said it was a huge insult to an industry battling fierce competition from supermarkets and online stores. Prince’s label has cut its ties with the album in the UK to try to appease music stores.

You know what’s a bigger insult to the music industry? Music store executive wankers, who see supermarkets and online stores who sell CDs to people who want to buy them as a problem. Pardon me if I don’t get upset when the high-street chains of music stores close down.

The Entertainment Retailers Association said the giveaway “beggars belief”. “It would be an insult to all those record stores who have supported Prince throughout his career,” ERA co-chairman Paul Quirk told a music conference. “It would be yet another example of the damaging covermount culture which is destroying any perception of value around recorded music.

Yes, it ‘beggars belief’ that a creative person would want to experiment and evaluate methods of distribution and promotion that vary from the status quo. Come on Prince! What the hell do you think you’re doing… stop trying to do creative things and instead, put on a suit and a tie and go and fucking apologise to Paul Quirk. Oh wait, don’t.
Would anyone else like to buy a t-shirt that says ‘Covermount Culture is destroying the perception of value around recorded music… and it’s fun’ on it?
The best part of all:-

“The Artist Formerly Known as Prince should know that with behaviour like this he will soon be the Artist Formerly Available in Record Stores. And I say that to all the other artists who may be tempted to dally with the Mail on Sunday.”

Yeah, watch out Prince, or if people can get your records from places other than record stores, then the record stores will stop selling them. This won’t be a problem though, as all your fans will simply get them from wherever else you make them available, whether that’s in the paper, from your website, or by mail order. Or you know, at gigs.
Wow. The music industry is even more of a spoilt child than I had previously realised.
UPDATE: I don’t have it to download, but I’m sure Google can help you.

So, finally.. after 16 years, it happened.
Today we released Version 3 of the GNU General Public License. Previously, we had GPLv2 (1991) and GPLv1 (1989). Strange to think I was 8 and 10 when these things came out. Prior to these, we even had The Emacs General Public License, which gave off many subtle varieties, such as this Nethack General Public License.
Anyway, to make way for this monumental event, we gave GNU.ORG a little spruce up… Not a lot, but we’ve added the GPLv3 ‘dog ear’ and GPLv3/FSF red to the banner.
Although it never got made live, I have to thank Rob Myers, for creating this GPLv3 edition of the GNU head.

Found this today – WhiteRoom – WhiteRoom – really good free (Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike) album.

Why does it seem one-upmanship and snootery are more prevalent in UK geek culture than in the US? It’s really weird.

I’ve felt this for a long time. It’s more obvious in free culture than in software to me.
I describe it as the same-five-people problem. Look on the board of most free culture type organisations and you’ll see what I mean.
I’m happy to say that Free Culture Foundation is different. We’re far from perfect, but we’re getting better. Promise.

I posted this earlier. In it, I argue that Free Culture advocates need to embrace Free Software generally, even if it means they can’t play Second Life.
This is intended to stir up some debate.
Principles, Software and Freedom by American freedom tycoon, Mako Hill is also a very good read.

me wants.

Dear The 1970s,
Please return the comedian ‘Eric Idle’ to us immediately. He has become a shadow of his former self and dick at the same time.
Yours in time,
2007.

John Sullivan’s Nokia E61 notes.

So, there’s a band your friend tells you about – maybe they’re the manager – and the band has a new release out. It’s on a major label, but you’re happy to overlook that for your friend.
There’s a problem though – the CD is in the stores, there might even be a vinyl version, but the only digital service offering it is iTunes, which using Digital Restrictions Management and is proprietary software. So, what do you do? You want to hear it, because even though your friend recommended it, you don’t want to pay out for a CD or record you don’t like, after all, if you’re going to give money to a major label to support your friend’s band, it’s going to be for something you at least want to listen to, right?
But thankfully, they’ve put the video on YouTube. Of course they have! Everyone uses YouTube, right? Well, almost everyone, it would seem… hell, we’ve almost got Gnash working with YouTube.
So, here’s how you do it. This works on GNU/Linux, but should work on Mac OS X or Windows, too.
Requires:-

• youtube-dl – a shell script for downloading from YouTube. Requires Python.
• mplayer – the ubiquitous media player.

Here’s how to do it…

1. Go to YouTube – find the video.
2. Copy the URL – ie. http://youtube.com/watch?v=RQzkU0pqi3E
3. Open up a Terminal
4. Type/paste: youtube-dl http://youtube.com/watch?v=RQzkU0pqi3E
5. Type/paste: mplayer -dumpaudio RQzkU0pqi3E.flv -dumpfile track.mp3

Voila! You have a slightly shitty quality mp3 file of the video. Have a listen, and then buy the CD or Vinyl. If you’re buying in the UK, you should know that HMV will sell you a CD over the web, and have it count toward chart position.
Of course, this would all be much idea if more people would support eMusic.