See also: last week's Letters page.

Letters to the editor

From:	 tres <class5@pacbell.net>
To:	 letters@lwn.net
Subject: Happy Birthday
Date:	 Thu, 24 Jan 2002 04:02:26 -0700

Linux Weekly news, known to me as Linux Daily/Hourly/Whenever news, is 
one of my favorite sites for Linux and Open Source/Free Software news. 
 I probably refresh http://lwn.net/daily 2-3 times per day; just to see 
'What's up'.  

I really like the fact that the legal and political issues are given 
equal weight with the technical and business issues as they are all 
equally critical to the ongoing success of all free and open projects. 
 As distasteful and uncomfortable as this side of the revolution is at 
times we must all, at the very least, remain aware of the issues.  If 
possible write a letter or call your elected representative and express 
your views.  Free and open projects are disruptive technologies and big 
business knows this.  They will use all the means at their disposal, 
including lobbying Congress, to stifle this change in thinking. 
 Although we don't have the financial resources that these 
Mega-Corporations have, we have something that they don't: numbers.  It 
is time that we started to wield that weapon more often.

If we can't get the attention of the politicians as a few people that 
'think outside the box' then we should try to get the attention of the 
media.  Perhaps if we can get their attention then they can get that of 
the politicians.  Most of them have web sites and email addresses.  If 
enough people ask the question then it might get asked on the 6:00 news!

</Rant>

Sorry about that.  The real reason of this letter is to say to LWN: 
Thanks and Happy Birthday.  GREAT SITE!!!

Tres

From:	 <bodvar@atlanta.is>
To:	 letters@lwn.net
Subject: LWN turns four -- thanks
Date:	 Fri, 25 Jan 2002 09:30:15 -0000

In your Editorial, Jan. 24, you say:
"Meanwhile, we would like to say "thank you" to all of our readers who have
kept us going for so long. Writing for this audience is a great pleasure."

IMHO, great thanks should go to the founder, manager, teacher, mentor and
principal of the free "Basic Linux Training" course, Mr. Henry White
(http://www.basiclinux.net), who has from the beginning made this e-mag a
weekly feature and thus inspired many to visit the site.

Also my thanks to you for holding out such a fine publication. I feel that
some of the best things you are doing, besides writing fine articles, is
giving references to articles of other publications. I can always rely on
LWN to give me the essence of what is going on in the Linux community and
its surroundings.

Thursdays are now, with or without Mr. White's postings, the day of visiting
LWN.

Bodvar Bjorgvinsson
Iceland.
mailto:bodv@vortex.is

From:	 John McKown <joarmc@swbell.net>
To:	 letters@lwn.net
Subject: DeCSS and "fast cars"
Date:	 Thu, 24 Jan 2002 14:13:19 -0600 (CST)

From what I just read, Jon Johansen is being detained for "contributory
copyright infringement." I guess this is because he is associated with
DeCSS and the MPAA insists that this can be used to "pirate" DVDs. First,
is there any evidence that it has been used in this way?

And another thing, why doesn't somebody make law enforcement go after all
the car designers and manufacturers? I know very well that they
deliberately and with intent design and manufacture vehicles which can
exceed even the highest speed limit in the US. These people must be
stopped from doing this. Even their ads on TV suggest this as
possible. Have you seen many car ads where the driver is driving
safely? No, they look like they'r in the Baja rally, but on a normal
street. Why should I, as the user of a "fast car" be the only one
responsible for my actions in its use? I think that the next time I get a
speeding ticket, I will have my lawyer supoena Mazda as a co-defendant
since the manufactured and sold a car which was capable of being used to
break the law.

-- 
John McKown

From:	 Grant Taylor <gtaylor@picante.com>
To:	 letters@lwn.net
Subject: 
Date:	 Thu, 24 Jan 2002 16:57:10 -0500

> HP Recently released its hpijs inkjet printer driver under a BSD
> license, making it the first free printer driver to come from a
> printer manufacturer.

It's not the first free driver at all!  HP, Samsung, and undoubtedly
other vendors have provided free drivers for various printers before.

HP's driver is interesting because it covers almost all of their
current inkjet line.  This is an order of magnitude better than
previous one-printer drivers, and immeasurably better than the
one-printer binary-only nonfree drivers from other vendors.

With this work HP has also provided the germ of a new Ghostscript
driver interface which will make driver installation substantially
easier in the future; this "hidden" accomplishment is worth pointing
out, too.

-- 
Grant Taylor - http://www.picante.com/~gtaylor/
Linux Printing Website and HOWTO:  http://www.linuxprinting.org/