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14 December 2005 (Strasbourg, France) The European Parliament today adopted a directive that will create the largest monitoring database in the world, tracking all communications within the EU. "From today, all EU citizens are to be tracked and monitored like common criminals," says Pieter Hintjens, president of the FFII.
http://wiki.ffii.de/DataRetPr051214En

ISPs are, of course, worried about their profits. We'll probably end up having to pay for it, on top of already paying for it. And under the guise of prevention of terrorism. Tsssss! Need I say more?

A week ago Colin added a plugin licence check to Sylpheed-Claws. Naturally enough, this checks that the plugin is licenced under the GPL and refuses to load a plugin that is not licenced under the GPL. (Inspired by the current kernel discussions and patches around the use of EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL(), for example, see here, here, and here.)

This was a small code addition but not an insignificant one: it is a political act that makes a clear statement. It is a statement with which I am in full agreement. In my opinion, too often free open source software is leaning too heavily on the 'apologetic' when declaring its free status. From the LGPL downwards, this watering-down is not a good thing and will only lead to free software being assimilated into the proprietary, closed sourced, closed minded software industry, thus losing any power of change that it currently seeks to entertain. It is a submissive stance whose only lasting effect will be in the act of declaring its submissiveness. This needs to stop. Free software is not yet a fire, it is merely a spark, but already some are stepping outside to help fetch the water to put it out, some are swapping their freedoms for nothing in return. It is but a speck in the blackness yet, sad as it is, we cling to it as there is so little else to cling to. As is said, '…so long as the people do not care to exercise their freedom, those who wish to tyrannize will do so…' *