[With sincerest apologies to Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, et al.]
When in the course of digital events, it becomes necessary for the people to dissolve the proprietary bonds which have connected them with their computer operating systems and other proprietary software.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all computer users are endowed with certain unalienable rights, and that among these are the pursuit of control of their digital experience: the right to choose their software, the right to run a program for any purpose, the right to study and adapt the program to one’s needs, the right to redistribute copies to help your neighbor and the freedom to improve the program and redistribute the improvements to the public for the benefit of all.
That whenever any form of corporate software hegemony becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to abolish it and institute a new system, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form that ensures digital choice and digital freedom.
When a long train of abuses and usurpations by proprietary softtware provided by multinational corporations design to subject computer users to digital despotism, it is the computer user’s right — it is their duty — to throw off this system, and to provide new safeguards for their future digital freedom.
We, therefore, the computer users of the world solemnly publish and declare that all computer users ought to be free and independent of proprietary software; that they are absolved from all allegiances to, and all political and social connection to, proprietary software, and claim all rights digital freedom provides. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of the divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our sacred honor.
[Click on comments above to sign]
John Hancock . . . I mean, Larry Cafiero.
Kenneth “Give-Me-Linux-Or-Give-Me-Death” Starks
I have not yet begun to Compile!
Susan “srlinuxx” Linton
Ercole “Ercolinux” Carpanetto
Karol T. Gajowniczek
Linux Registered User #142293
Ah, yeah.. Susan uses Gentoo.
Dennis Jnsn
The rest of the old world, salutes and supports the colonies in their fight to escape the proprietary oppression.
~~—Konstantine Thoukydidis.
Krzysztof “Jezuch” Sobolewski.
Now, do we need to fight a war for lindependence?
So it is written, so let it be compiled.
Mark D. “techiem2″ Montgomery II
Hm.. Danijel [libervisco] Orsolic
Free to Code
It’s time to put on the sun glasses (“They Live”) and look around.
Rave on, my bruthas and sistahs.
Paul ‘The GnuGuy’ Nass
It is a good thing that the copyright on the Declaration of Independence has expired, or else you might be in serious trouble!
Who is passing out the muskets?
And after the revolution comes a constitution. I’ll leave that for someone else to write, but we then need a Second Amendment:
“Openness and standards, being necessary to the security of our computers and data, the right of the people to create and use Free Software shall not be infringed”
John Jeffrey Imperial
Freedom is not expensive. It’s elusive.
Let’s fight for freedom by coding, translating, documenting, bug testing and otherwise contributing to freedom software projects.
Jure “JLP” Repinc
“Now, do we need to fight a war for lindependence? ”
With Microsoft releasing a low cost laptop with XP on it, it would be my contention that war is already being fought.
h
Juan Sebastián Echeverry
We are not to expect to be translated from despotism to liberty in a featherbed – Thomas Jefferson
I’ve heard this somewhere before…
Don’t Tread on Me or Open Source!
Remember the Boston Tea Party? I think it’s about time for another!
John Adams
Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety – BF
Jason Corfman, descendant of George Walton, signer of the Declaration of Independence
“What do we mean by the American Revolution? Do we mean the American war? The Revolution was effected before the war commenced. The Revolution was in the minds and hearts of the people; a change in their religious sentiments, of their duties and obligations… This radical change in the principles, opinions, sentiments, and affections of the people was the real American Revolution.” – John Adams, 1818
“Microsoft is coming! Microsoft is coming! “
“Microsoft is coming! Microsoft is coming!!”
Felipe “Revere” (i mean…) Rivera
Ok,… i dont remember..is Linden something to do with the virtual life for losers, the Gnu/Linux distro that was run by that used car salesman Carmony and that signed that shameful extortion deal with Redmond or some retired NHL player?
The mind wanders when you have the clap.
Bobby
The status quo change the rules.
“That whenever any form of corporate software hegemony becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to abolish it and institute a new system, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form that ensures digital choice and digital freedom.”
I remember when the Yippies tried to run Pigasus for President citing this particular section of the your Constitution, and the status quo created a crime called “Conspiracy” because they couldn’t cite what conspiracy the Yippies were doing.
Of course since this is the standard knee jerk response of the status quo, one could try to invent something that would get such a response, and whose longer term end result would be to legitimise free software.
Actually I see MS is busily shooting itself in the foot by sales of low end laptops here in Oz, with XP home installed. Since the economy is tight, these are getting all the sales, and no one is going to want Vista, ever, or upgrade to a more environmentally unfriendly machine, especially as Google docs and other web based apps are better than being stuck in Office.
Giving out free copies of Live Linux that I know will work to these people as they carry off their purchases has been quite a successful way of promoting Linux. I tell them its a better version of Windows called XWindows and does Google docs and Web2.
Keep up the good work.
Boston Tea party
More like Redmond tea party
Henrik “ZarathustraDK” Peytz
Mmmm the Redmond Tea Party is nearing.
“When a monopoly violates the people’s rights, insurrection is, for the people and for each portion of the people, the most sacred of the rights and the most indispensible of duties.”
Apologies to the Marquis de Lafayette.
Can’t wait for “Lindependence Day The Move”!!!
Rob…
Listen man, I know you recently went to Oregon…it would appear you spent some time in the pastures looking for Liberty Caps.
From the evidence of your post, It would appear you search was fruitful.
h
One of the most important grievances you left out is the loss of control over our own data, our own creative output, in proprietary data and file formats. This amounts to holding our data hostage, blackmail, or stealing, depending on your point-of-view. One might compare it to taxation without representation.
cl0s of Chozen Few
Bogdan Calapod (Romania)
>> Boston Tea party
Surely there will be a Felton CD Party, no?
A few box loads of LiveCDs dumped to kick off an installfest in July.
“don’t tread on me”
Tom “TommyGun” King
“Once more unto the breach…!” — yes, from a play about some other war, I know.
James Lynch, superstuff7@gmail.com I proudly sign this wonderful document.
The revolution _will_ be televised, here:
http://archive.org/details/digitaltippingpoint
and we are looking for people who want to help document the revolution in video.
The DTP is a film library project and a documentary film project that strives to do three things: 1) build a great collection of video about the new human renaissance that Free Open Source Software (FOSS) will bring to the world; 2) build a movie-in-a-box out of the 5 best hours of that footage; 3) create an entertaining, informative documentary out of that library. The film will show how Free Open Source Software is in the process of creating an explosion of creativity, literacy, and scientific advancement. The target audience is Windows users. We want to make the film sufficiently fun that even Windows users will be entertained.
We have filmed many dignitaries such as Christian Ude (the Mayor of Munich), Hermann-Josef Pelgrim (the Mayor of Schwaebisch Hall), Gilberto Gil (the Culture Minister of Brazil), and Luiz Millan Vazquez de Miguel, (the Extremaduran Minister of Science, Education), Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia, and Ubuntu lead Mark Shuttleworth. Our film is the first feature length documentary to be built on-line out of fully forkable footage released under a Creative Commons Attribute-ShareAlike license on the Internet Archive.
You can see our raw video here, where we currently have 59 hours of raw video. This video will need to be re-rendered for most applications other than casual watching, as it is our “source code”.
http://www.archive.org/details.php?identifier=digitaltippingpoint
Our keyword search index page is located below. It is the place to go to find specific persons or themes for our footage.
http://tinyurl.com/yluwoc
We welcome people to join our merry band of video editors. Video editing is easy. It is really just like dragging video here and there. Some day, people will be editing video the same way that people write letters today, and we want to hasten that day’s arrival. Please email Christian Einfeldt at einfeldt at gmail dot com if you are interested.. We will be shooting the events at Felton, California, for Lindependence Day 2008.
I humbly endorse this declaration.
FREEDOM!
Victor Gascon
Linux Registered User #418894
One Day we will truly be free … from the evil OS!
Tweak it until it breaks, then learn how to fix it! L(inux)I(s)F(or)E(veryone) (Thanks Helios)
Don’t try this with Windows!